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Yellow Hollywood: Asian martial arts in U.S. global cinema

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YELLOW HOLLYWOOD:
ASIAN MARTIAL ARTS IN U.S. GLOBAL CINEMA

by

Mina Shin

A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHEN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
(CRITICAL STUDIES)

August 2008

Copyright 2008 Mina Shin

ii
Acknowledgements
I was able to finish this long journey thanks to many people. First and
foremost, I’d like to thank my advisor Dana Polan, who has supported me throughout
my graduate years at USC. I learned from him what a film scholar is and what s/he
should be like. I will never forget what he said when I told him it takes 13 hours to fly
back home in Seoul: “Then you can read 3 books and two articles.” I took it as a joke,
but he meant it. I have never seen and will never meet such a diligent and sincere film
scholar as him. I thank him for staying as my chair even after leaving USC.
ٛ I am grateful to other committee members. Curtis Marez has always amazed
me with his knowledge and I owe to him some important concepts in my dissertation.
He has offered me the most unique perspective and approach to my topic. I met Akira
Lippit in the final years of my Ph.D. program. But within a short period of time, he has
shown commitment to my project and become a strong supporter of my academic
career. Lastly, I have been fortune to have Jane Iwamura as an outside member. Her
smile and positive energy have been my inspiration and I thank her for sharing my/her
personal joys and difficulties as a working mom.
KwanJeong Educational Foundation in Seoul, Korea, generously offered me
financial support during the first three years of my Ph.D. program. Thanks to them, I
could finish coursework and qualifying exams in a timely manner. Diana Evans helped
me complete this dissertation on time by meticulously editing and proofreading my
manuscript.
iii
I thank my parents, who have supported me financially and emotionally for my
entire life. At first, they did not want me to leave Korea and come to the States to
study alone. But now they are happy to see me earn a Ph.D. I owe them eternal
gratitude.
As this dissertation grew my personal life grew. Within the past three years, I
fell in love, got married, became pregnant, and delivered a baby boy. It seemed almost
impossible to finish this dissertation with a newborn baby next to me. My husband
Soonsung Hong made it happen. Without his love and understanding, I would not be
here. My deepest love and appreciation goes to him. Finally, I dedicate this
dissertation to my son James Jinpyo Hong who has just turned 15 month old as of June
2008. As a first-time mom as well as an ABD, the past year was the most challenging
time of my life. But now I can proudly pronounce that I am a “Ph.D. mom.” I thank
Jinpyo for coming into my life and growing up such a happy and healthy baby. His
smile makes me the happiest person on earth.
iv
Abstract
This dissertation examines the so-called “Asian invasion,” the representation
of Asian martial arts in Hollywood against the wider backdrops of cultural
globalization, American domestic politics of race and sexuality, and U.S.-Asia
relations. Martial arts have been a critical means for both the Hong Kong and
Hollywood film industries to dominate global cinema.
On one hand, martial arts have been the platform for Hong Kong stars to enter
Hollywood and go global. While Hollywood martial arts roles have been used to
stereotype and racialize the yellow body, Hong Kong kung fu stars have capitalized on
their skills for the benefit of their careers. By examining the cases of Bruce Lee and
Jackie Chan, my dissertation argues that the representation of martial arts on the
yellow body in Hollywood has been the result of constant negotiation between
American Orientalism and Asian talents’ desire for global visibility and success.
On the other hand, recognizing martial arts’ values as a global commodity and
as popular entertainment, Hollywood has produced its own martial arts films that
feature American heroes performing Asian martial arts. This dissertation focuses on
the genre of martial arts Western, best exemplified by the 1970s TV series Kung Fu
and a contemporary samurai blockbuster, The Last Samurai. By combining the
religious and spiritual aspects of martial arts philosophy with Western mythology,
these martial arts Westerns revive American ideologies, such as Manifest Destiny and
v
White Man’s Burden, and naturalize the white hero’s superiority in mastering other
cultures.
vi
Table of Contents

Acknowledgements ii
Abstract iv
Introduction: Yellow Hollywood 1

Part 1: Globalizing Martial Arts: Hong Kong vs. Hollywood
Chapter 1: Postcolonial Hong Kong and Its Global Cinema 17
Chapter 2: The History of Hollywood Martial Arts Cinema 48

Part 2: Hong Kong Stars in Hollywood
Chapter 3: Bruce Lee’s Legacy in Hong Kong Cinema and 1970s America 78
Chapter 4: Jackie Chan’s American Dream in Hollywood 112

Part 3: Hollywood Martial Arts Western
Chapter 5: Kung Fu, the First Eastern Western on American Television 149
Chapter 6: Japan and the White Samurai Fantasy in The Last Samurai 183

Conclusion: The Emergence of Hallyu Stars as New Martial Arts Characters 213
Bibliography 219

1
Introduction: Yellow Hollywood
Shortly before and after my arrival in the U.S. to study at the University of
Southern California, a kung fu phenomenon swept worldwide movie theaters. The
Hollywood blockbuster, The Matrix (1999) was an international hit, including in my
hometown. I observed that almost all screens in newly rising multiplex theaters in
Seoul were playing the film. Each theater was fully packed with crowds who
enthusiastically cheered for the film’s digitalized sci-fi kung fu action. After a year or
so, I crossed the Pacific and witnessed Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon (2000)
playing in an independent art movie theater in Los Angeles. When I attended the
screening in its opening week, the theater was almost empty; but the film eventually
turned out a sleeper hit in the U.S., returning more than $128 million to the U.S.
distributor, Sony Pictures Classics. American press and news media buzzed about its
unexpected success in the U.S.
Initiated by these two films, the kung fu boom developed into roughly two
directions within the Hollywood film industry in subsequent years. On one hand,
Hollywood continued making Asian martial arts-themed action movies – to name
several, Charlie’s Angels (2000), Romeo Must Die (2000), Shanghai Noon (2000), The
One (2001), Rush Hour 2 (2001), Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (2001), Kiss of the Dragon
(2001), The Tuxedo (2002), Blade II (2002), Resident Evil (2002), Shanghai Knights
(2003), Bulletproof Monk (2003), Cradle 2 Grave (2003), Kill Bill 1, 2 (2003, 4),
Daredevil (2003), Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle (2003), Elektra (2004), Unleashed
2
(2005), Aeon Flux (2005), Rush Hour 3 (2007), and War (2007). The ticket sale
records of these films vary film by film; but, as they were all distributed worldwide
through the Hollywood global network, almost all the films yielded profits, far over
production costs at least.
On the other hand, Hollywood studios began to invest in and import more
Hong Kong/Chinese martial arts films. Miramax distributed Hong Kong Stephen
Chow’s kung fu comedy Shaolin Soccer (2001) and Chinese fifth generation director
Zhang Yimou’s first martial arts epic, Hero (2002), in 2002 and 2004, respectively.
Miramax covered nearly two-thirds of the production cost of Hero, which, with its $30
million budget, made the film the most expensive film ever made in Chinese film
history at that time. Miramax advised director Zhang to cut 20 minutes for the U.S.
release to speed the pace and make it more palatable for American audiences.
1
Also,
the studio cleverly marketed the film with the heading “Quentin Tarantino Presents,”
which helped Hero succeed at box offices after two years of delay before the U.S.
release. After the success of Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, Sony Pictures Classics
continued its martial arts adventure by releasing Zhang Yimou’s second martial arts
epic, House of Flying Daggers (2004), and another Stephen Chow’s kung fu comedy,
Kung Fu Hustle (2004). Columbia Pictures Film Production Asia in Hong Kong, a
subsidiary of Sony Pictures Entertainment, Inc., funded Kung Fu Hustle, which
became the highest grossing foreign film in 2005 in the U.S.

1
Craig S. Smith, “Hero Soars, and Its Director Thanks Crouching Tiger,” New York Times, September
2, 2004.
3
According to The New York Times, these martial arts films are the only
thriving foreign films in downfalling foreign-language film markets in the U.S. In his
article “Is Foreign Film the New Endangered Species?” Anthony Kaufman writes:
In 2005, just 10 foreign-language films had ticket sales of more than $1
million in the United States. Like “Crouching Tiger,” the leaders were
martial arts fantasies. The top grosser, Stephen Chow’s “Kung Fu
Hustle,” ranked No. 116 at the domestic box office, with $17.1 million
in receipts. ..Zhang Yimou’s “House of Flying Daggers” had $11
million in ticket sales. But some of the best-reviewed foreign films of
2005 – “The Holy Girl, “Kings and Queen,” “3-Iron,” “Kontroll,”
“Turtles Can Fly,” “Best of Youth” – struggled to crack $300,000.
2

Kaufman attributes several factors to the marginalization of foreign films: the
media’s lack of attention to foreign films, the profligacy of what he calls “mini-major
pseudo-indie productions”
3
that steal limited venues for foreign films, and
commercially viable documantary films. While he does not simply blame martial arts
films for failures of other foreign films, he implies that Chinese martial arts films have
an unintentionally negative effect on the importation of other foreign films in the U.S.
I argue that this phenomenon ironically indicates the enormous popularity of martial
arts films among American audiences in the 2000s.
Both Hollywood martial arts films and imported Chinese martial arts films
together have created a kung fu boom in American culture for almost a decade. In a
way, my initial interest in martial arts films was coincidental. Kung fu was everywhere.
Keanu Reeves was kicking and flying like a martial arts superhero. Chow Yun-fat

2
Anthony Kaufman, “Is Foreign Film the New Endangered Species?” New York Times, January 22,
2006. AR 23.
3
Ibid.
4
changed his outfit from a modern city gangster look, represented by the famous trench
coat with dozens of bullet holes in John Woo’s A Better Tomorrow (1986), to a
traditional Chinese costume with a queue, and jumped around in a bamboo forest. The
old 1970s TV series Charlie’s Angels returned with a new cast, which was armed with
barefoot kung fu skills instead of guns. Bruce Lee incarnated in the white female body
of Uma Thurman in Kill Bill, holding a samurai sword instead of nunchaku. As a
person who studies film and popular culture, I could not overlook this cultural
phenomenon.
However, foremost, my experiences and identity as an Asian female in the
U.S. have shaped my academic interests in the representation of Asian martial arts in
Hollywood. Since the birth of cinema Hollywood has stereotyped Asians from the
barbaric Oriental to the exotic geisha girl. While these old portrayals of Asians are
extant in American popular culture, the image of an Asian as a kung fu master has
been newly dominating Hollywood screens with the new millennium. The Hollywood
martial arts-themed films offered me the chance to see familiar Asian faces in
American movie theaters. They featured Hong Kong stars, such as Jackie Chan or Jet
Li, paired with either a white or black actor. I hardly saw Asian actors in Hollywood
films other than these two kung fu stars. It was also difficult to watch other Asian
films besides martial arts films in America without regularly checking independent
film festivals or small art house theaters. As Kaufman points out, if kung fu films
marginalized other foreign films, it also squeezed out other Asian films, where I can
5
meet various Asian characters other than kung fu masters. I came to wonder why these
images of Asian kung fu masters have emerged as the most popular portrayals of
Asians in contemporary American consumer culture. What is behind this imagination?
Part of my question has already been answered in the field of Asian American
film criticism, which criticizes the ideological implication of stereotypical
representations of Asians/Asian Americans in Hollywood. Borrowing from Edward
Said’s critiques of the Western representation of the Middle East, Asian American
film criticism has used Orientalism as the major theoretical framework to criticize
Hollywood practices.
4
Apparently, it is appropriate to understand the representation of
Asian martial arts in American media in a framework of Orientalism. Asian martial
arts have been received as one of the most unique aspects of Asian culture in the West
and have fascinated Americans for many reasons – to name a few, the idea that body
itself can be a deadly weapon without the help of a gun, the mythology that secrets of
technique, wisdom, and training can be inherited by the chosen ones, and the
discipline that encourages the integration of body, mind, and spirit in harmony. In
short, Asian martial arts are imagined as an art form caught between spiritual religion
and deadly violence, which fits perfectly into a larger scheme of American
Orientalism that sees Asia as a mysterious, exotic, and barbaric (violent) Orient.
Here, I do not intend to repeat the Orientalism suggested by Edward Said, nor
merely aim to discuss whether or not the representations of Asian martial arts in

4
Edward Said, Orientalism (Vintage Books, 1978).
6
Hollywood are stereotypes based on Orientalism. Given the complicated political,
economic, and military relations between the U.S. and Asia in the 21st century, Said’s
Orientalism has to be modified to accommodate new historical shifts. A new
perspective is necessary to understand contemporary American Orientalism, especially
towards East Asia. While the basic tenets of American Orientalism have maintained
the same, the details have changed to reflect specific historical circumstances.
American Orientalism has developed as a response to the constant interaction between
American domestic and foreign politics. The shifts within American domestic politics
of race and U.S. diplomatic relations with individual Asian countries have influenced
the nature of American Orientalism. For instance, beginning in the 1930s, the
American perception of China changed from that of an ancient and remote country to
a progressive, modern, and democratic “new China,”
5
as Japan emerged as the new
enemy, especially after the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941. However, the situation was
soon reversed when China fell under Mao’s communist regime and the U.S. occupied
Japan. This exemplifies how Orientalism has been conditioned or changed in relation
to the dynamic relations between the U.S. and Asian countries. Thus, as Lisa Lowe
and many Asian American scholars contend, American Orientalism has been neither
monolithic nor stable but should be historicized and contextualized.
6
Similarly, it is
not productive to simply dismiss Hollywood’s representations of Asia as Orientalist.

5
For details, see Karen J.Leong’s The China Mystique: Pearl S.Buck, Anna May Wong, Mayling Soong,
and the Transformation of American Orientalism (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005).
6
Lisa Lowe, Critical Terrains: French and British Orientalisms (Ithaca: Cornell University Press,
1994).
7
The social contexts that produce such a stereotype should be historicized and
contextualized. In his book Orientals: Asian Americans in Popular Culture, Robert
Lee argues that there have been six dominant images of Orientals in American popular
imagination since the late 19
th
century: the pollutant, the coolie, the deviant, the
yellow peril, the model minority, and the gook. According to him, no single image
represents the totality of the American representation of Asians. Rather, each image
has appeared dominant in specific historical moments in relation to American politics
of race, class, gender, and sexuality.
7
I suggest that images of Asians as martial arts
experts should be understood in this regard.
My dissertation Yellow Hollywood: Asian Martial Arts in U.S. Global Cinema
examines the representations of Asian martial arts, mainly those of Japan and China,
against the backdrop of American domestic politics of race and U.S.-East Asian
relations. I aim to historicize the emergence of various images of Asian martial arts: if
certain martial arts image emerged dominant and popular I look at what were the new
needs of American domestic and international politics in a given time that allowed
such representations. From the beginning, the diffusion of Asian martial arts in the
U.S. was critically related to the building of the American empire in Asia. The
returning World War II American soldiers who were stationed in American military
bases in Asia transferred Japanese marital arts, such as judo and karate, to U.S. soil.
Without this background, the Hollywood depiction of WWII veterans with judo skills

7
Robert Lee, Orientals: Asian Americans in Popular Culture (Philadelphia: Temple University Press,
1999), 12.

8
would not exist. The Japanese martial arts boom shifted to Chinese martial arts kung
fu in the early 1970s, when Bruce Lee emerged as a transnational kung fu star. Bruce
Lee enraptured Americans with his powerful kung fu skills. Embracing kung fu as a
cultural artifact of a “friendly” China was related to America’s new diplomatic
relations with Communist China and growing racial tolerance towards Asian
Americans in U.S. society. Since then, kung fu has become a recurring spectacle and a
hot commodity in Hollywood. I mainly focus on the time period after Bruce Lee to the
present because the shift to kung fu was the most critical turning point in the
development of Asian martial arts in Hollywood.
I divide my dissertation based on the important themes and categories. Part I,
“Globalizing Martial Arts: Hollywood vs. Asia,” offers a historical overview of
martial arts filmmaking in the Hong Kong and Hollywood film industries. Originated
from indigenous Chinese history and tradition, martial arts cinema was dominated by
the Hong Kong film industry until very recently. Hollywood industry has taken over
its command by engaging in two strategies. On one hand, Hollywood has brought
already-established Asian action stars and filmmakers into the system – to name a few,
Jackie Chan, Sammo Hong, Jet Li, John Woo, Yuen Woo-ping, and Michelle Yeoh.
These people have been involved in Hollywood martial arts projects as actor,
choreographer, or director. On the other hand, Hollywood has developed its own
American martial arts genre. Beginning from the small cult fan-oriented direct-to-
video market, represented by the films of Cynthia Rothrock, Chuck Norris, Jean-
9
Claude van Damme, and Steven Segal, American martial arts cinema has lately
expanded to the mainstream, as demonstrated by The Matrix and many others
blockbuster marital arts films. This trend forebodes disaster for the future of Hong
Kong cinema. Once celebrated as a global cinema that could compete with
Hollywood, the Hong Kong film industry has rapidly declined since the late 1990s.
The anxiety over the 1997 handover to mainland China expedited the brain-drain of
talented filmmakers to Hollywood. However, I argue that this does not necessarily
mean the end of Hong Kong transnationalism. Rather, crossover Hong Kong martial
arts professionals signify that Hong Kong cinema has entered the second stage of its
transnationalism. As “flexible citizens,”
8
to borrow a term from Aihwa Ong, Hong
Kong professionals negotiate their talent with Hollywood in order to survive and sell
their martial arts skills globally. Indeed, martial arts cinema is an interesting site from
which to discuss the power struggle over cultural globalization.
Chapter 1 discuses the development of Hong Kong cinema as a global as well
as a diasporic cinema in relation to Hong Kong’s unique postcolonial identity. I argue
that Hong Kong martial arts cinema is one of the key genres that helped Hong Kong
cinema grow from a local cinema to a global cinema. I will examine the careers of
important individual filmmakers and actors, and landmark films that established the
Hong Kong martial arts tradition.

8
Aihwa Ong, Flexible Citizenship: The Cultural Logics of Transnationality (Durham, Duke University
Press, 1999).
10
Chapter 2 examines the growth of the American marital arts genre from the
silent era in relation to Hollywood commercialism, American racial politics, and U.S.-
Asia relations. In the early days, Asian martial arts was merely an accessory for
making a character more attractive or making a fighting scene more exciting. It
gradually became central to the narrative and the major attraction of the genre with the
advent of martial arts B-movies, family-oriented martial arts movies, and television
programs. Today, martial arts is central in every aspects of American popular culture,
from comics, cartoons, television, action figures, merchandise, music, and books, to
film.
Part 2, entitled “Hong Kong stars in Hollywood,” explores how the two most
popular kung fu stars, Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan, have emerged as cultural icons in
the U.S. in the 1970s and 2000s, respectively. Lee and Chan developed different film
personas and action styles, but both benefited from Hong Kong’s character as a
postcolonial city and Hong Kong cinema’s status as a diasporic cinema. The city’s
existence as a liminal space, between the West and the East, capitalism and
communism, or modernity and tradition, and its close relation with Chinese diaporic
populations throughout the Asia gave them the opportunity to explore transnational
careers. As a result, they succeeded in popularizing the kung fu genre, building a
global Hong Kong film industry, and launching their careers in the U.S. Certain
American contexts helped them break through in Hollywood as well. The popularity
of Bruce Lee as working class underdog hero, especially among racial minorities,
11
cannot be separated from historical events such as anti-Vietnam War sentiments,
Nixon’s visit to China in 1972, and growing racial tolerance towards Asians and Asian
Americans followed by the Asian immigration law of 1965 and the emerging notion of
Asian Americans as a model minority. In Jackie Chan’s case, both his star persona as a
comic action hero and contemporary cultural conditions – multiculturalism, the
emergence of Chinese transnational professionals, the growing percentage of Asian
markets in the Hollywood market share, and the consumption power of martial arts
among the urban middle class – allowed him access to larger mainstream American
audiences.
Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan represent the possibilities and limits of Hong Kong
transnationalism in Hollywood. On one hand, both Lee and Chan had to “kung fu” to
be admitted and visualized in Hollywood global media. Lee unintentionally
engendered the Asian kung fu stereotype. Chan received the baton and fortified the
stereotype. However, this does not necessarily mean that they were merely victims of
kung fu stereotypes. Rather, they used their martial arts skills for the benefit of their
individual media careers to receive the spotlight of American popular culture and
make kung fu circulate globally. Their acceptance of Hollywood roles was the results
of their constant negotiation between institutional racism or Orientalism and their
desire for global visibility and success. Their cases are paramount in the discussion of
Hong Kong transnationalism.
12
Part 3, “Hollywood Martial Arts Western,” discusses how Hollywood has
developed its own unique martial arts genre by combining the Western with Asian
martial arts. I focus on this particular genre because it best demonstrates how martial
arts can be Americanized to reinvigorate the dead Western and revive American
ideologies. The Western is considered “a most American genre”
9
since its iconography
and mythology is steeped in American history. The myths of the Great Wild West and
frontiersmanship in the 19
th
century formed America’s national identity as a country of
freedom, adventure, and challenge. The ideology that the conquest of wilderness
through westward movement was a divine mission to bring democracy and civilization
to savages, and that whites were destined to perform this task, served to justify
American expansionism. All these myths and ideologies founded the Western genre
and were embodied through Western icons, such as a gunfighter and a cowboy.
However, as the U.S. experienced its national identity crisis in the late 1960s, the
Western faced a rapid decline. There have been several attempts to revitalize the genre.
The philosophical and spiritual elements of Asian martial arts seemed to fill the void
of Western ideologies and recover the tainted morality of white violence. The offbeat
American martial arts genre, called an Eastern Western, a kung fu Western, or a
samurai Western, was born.
As examples, I discuss the first martial arts Western, the 1970s TV series Kung
Fu, and a contemporary Hollywood samurai blockbuster, The Last Samurai (2003), in

9
Ralph Lamar Turner and Robert J.Higgs, The Cowboy Way: The Western Leader in Film, 1945-1995
(Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1999), xviii.
13
chapters 5 and 6 respectively. Starring David Carradine as Kwai Chang Caine, a half-
Chinese, half-American Shaolin monk who wanders in the Wild West, Kung Fu
delivered a pacifist message to the violence-torn nation in the early 1970s. Introducing
kung fu’s nature-oriented philosophies, the show emphasized that peace and
forgiveness could be the solution to the racial conflict and social injustice of the times.
Set in the 1870s, The Last Samurai presents Tom Cruise as Captain Nathan Algren, a
disillusioned war veteran. Suffering from his guilt of killing innocent Native American
children and women, Algren goes to Japan and becomes spiritually reborn by learning
Bushido, the samurai code. Falling in love with Japanese culture and tradition, Algren
stands on the side of the deteriorating samurai class, and by doing so, he redeems his
sin of Indian genocide. Although these Hollywood martial arts Westerns seem to
depict Asian cultures positively and treat racial minorities sympathetically, they use
spiritual aspects of Asian martial arts to justify white use of violence. They imply that
the white violence in American warfare in Vietnam and Iraq respectively, was the
honorable and inevitable choice for bringing civilization and democracy to the world.
Through American characters who trans-pass freely between American and minority
cultures, these martial arts Westerns revive the myth of the Wild West and American
ideologies such as Manifest Destiny and White Man’s Burden.
There are many Hollywood martial arts films that feature white characters who
master Asian martial arts. Due to the Hollywood’s worldwide distribution network,
images of white martial arts heroes circulate globally and are becoming more friendly
14
and natural. What is the significance of such mimicry and mastery of Asian martial
arts on the white body?
Leon Hunt approaches the phenomenon from an economic perspective. He
argues that these films “offer worst-case scenarios for the future of diasporic Hong
Kong action – Asian expertise used to bolster a cinema that continues to marginalize
Asian performers.”
10
In other words, white actors will take away the martial arts action
roles that used to be given to Asian actors. As whites themselves can perform martial
arts there will be fewer jobs for Asian martial arts professionals to take. If so, it will be
much harder to see Asian faces on Hollywood screens.
Sean M.Tierney examines the ideological implications of this phenomenon. In
his article, “Themes of Whiteness in Bulletproof Monk, Kill Bill and The Last
Samurai,” he argues that these Hollywood films that present white martial arts heroes
reflect American narcissism and the ideology of white superiority.
American martial arts films provide examples of cultural appropriation
undergirded by whiteness ideology rationalized through strategic
rhetoric of whiteness. Acquisition of martial arts mastery by White
protagonists may be seen as innocuous, entertaining, and enriching, but
it constitutes a significant filmic form of cultural colonialism and
appropriation that reinforces hegemonic ideas of racial and cultural
superiority and inferiority, with consequences that reach far beyond the
movie theater.
11
I agree with his arguments that the embodiment of Asian martial arts on the
white body reflects the American fantasy to colonize Asian culture. I basically

10
Leon Hunt, “The Hong Kong/Hollywood Connection: Stardom and Spectacle in Transnational Action
Cinema,” in Action and Adventure Cinema, ed. Yvonne Tasker (New York: Routledge, 2004), 280.
11
Sean M.Tierney, “Themes of Whiteness in Bulletproof Monk, Kill Bill and The Last Samurai,”
Journal of Communication 56 (2006): 622.
15
understand the Hollywood martial arts Westerns from this perspective. Not only The
Last Samurai he discusses but also the TV series Kung Fu he did not address in his
discussion can be understood in this regard. Both present American heroes whose
superior talent allows them to master Asian martial arts quickly and better than their
Asian peers.
However, the white fantasy of mastering and colonizing Asian culture
ironically implies American dependence on Asian-ness in defining whiteness or
American-ness. As David Desser points out, American culture and national identity
have always evolved in relation to other cultures, and Asian culture occupies an
integral part of them.
12
This is why I entitle my dissertation “Yellow Hollywood.” The
term “Yellow” is a derogatory term used to signify Asians and Asian-ness. On one
hand, I use this term in order to underline the American racism or Orientalism
practiced in American society and the Hollywood system. On the other hand, I use the
term to highlight the important roles that Asians have played and their contribution to
the development of American history and popular culture. Asian martial arts are an
interesting site where both the American fantasy to colonize Asian-ness and the
American aspiration for Asian-ness are simultaneously displayed.
Both Hollywood and Asian martial arts films have been critically dismissed by
critics and film theorists. The prejudices that they are low quality films with anti-
intellectual content and that they are escapist, ideologically reactionary and

12
David Desser, “Consuming Asia: Chinese and Japanese Popular Culture and the American
Imaginary,” Multiple Modernities: Cinemas and Popular Media in Transcultural East Asia, ed. Jenny
Kwok Wah Lau (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2003), 180-181.
16
conservative have dominated film criticism. My dissertation will correct such
perceptions. The martial arts genre is an important forum in which one can discuss the
dynamic tensions over globalization between the Hollywood and Hong Kong film
industries, American politics of race, and American ideologies. To prove my points, I
combine the theoretical discourses of Film Studies, Cultural Studies, American
Studies, Asian American Studies, Ethnic Studies, and Studies of Globalization. My
interdisciplinary approach will contribute to diversified discussions of racial
representations in U.S. global media. It is my wish that my work can give clues, not
only for Asians or Asian Americans, but also for other racial minorities, about how to
understand and engage their images as produced by Hollywood.

17
Part 1: Globalizing Martial Arts: Hong Kong vs. Hollywood
Chapter 1: Postcolonial Hong Kong and Its Global Cinema
Martial arts cinema has made Hong Kong cinema a global empire. Since the
silent film era, many talented Chinese film professionals have vigorously reinvented
and revolutionized the genre and it has developed into an icon of Hong Kong cinema.
Even though Hong Kong cinema has rapidly declined at the turn of new millennium,
as Meagan Morris puts it, “Hong Kong has played a formative rather than a marginal
role in shaping action cinema as it circulates globally today.”
13
Morris argues that the
transnationalism of action cinema is not new since its well-developed aesthetic and
industrial traditions make it easily move across national boundaries. However, Hong
Kong action, especially the martial arts genre, is an interesting case because it is a
genre that is deeply embedded in Asian tradition but has reached global audiences.
Indeed, in the history of world cinema, there is no other film genre like martial arts
cinema, which has a deeply indigenous or national origin but has gained transnational
popularity. As Leon Hunt puts it, kung fu has entered “the transnational imaginary.”
14

In this chapter, I will discuss how the Hong Kong martial arts genre has grown
from a local genre into a global form of art in relation to Hong Kong’s unique identity
and history. The Chinese diasporic culture, inter-Asian relations, free market

13
Meaghan Morris, “Transnational Imagination in Action Cinema: Hong Kong and the Making of a
Global Popular Culture,” Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, 5(2) (2004): 183.
14
Leon Hunt, Kung Fu Cult Masters: From Bruce Lee to Crouching Tiger. (London: Wallflower Press,
2003), 1.
18
economic system, and postcolonial identity all played together to give birth to its
global stars and directors. Without them, Hong Kong cinema could not have jumped
from a tiny local cinema to a global cinema that can compete with the Hollywood
empire.

Postcolonial Hong Kong
Hong Kong’s postcolonial identity has shaped Hong Kong cinema as a unique
national

or local cinema
15
as well as a global cinema. Hong Kong is a city where the
legacy of empire and global capitalism are complicatedly intertwined without clear
boundaries. Since China lost the first Opium War in 1841, Hong Kong had been a
British Crown Colony for over 150 years until the handover to China in 1997. Now it
is a Special Autonomous Region of the People’s Republic of China. Hong Kong is
guaranteed to have a relatively high degree of autonomy for at least 50 years (until
2047) under the policy of “One Country, Two Systems.” In many respects, Hong
Kong appears to be an inappropriate place for postcolonial arguments: it represents an
unprecedented form of postcoloniality.
16

In relation to British colonialism, Hong Kong goes beyond the old paradigm of
imperialism and colonialism. As Yuk-Lin Renita Wong puts it, “the challenge of Hong

15
The term “national” is probably a misnomer when applied to Hong Kong because Hong Kong is not a
nation. Rather, it is a city-state of around six million people. Therefore, “local, regional, ethnic, or
cultural” identity may be a more appropriate term.
16
Esther Yau, “Border Crossing: Mainland China’s Presence in Hong Kong Cinema,” in New Chinese
Cinemas: Forms, Identities, Politics. ed. Nick Browne, Paul G.Pickowicz, Vivian Sobchack, and Esther
Yau (Cambridge University Press, 1996),180.
19
Kong to the theorization of postcoloniality lies in its ‘success’ of becoming a modern
and affluent metropolitan city which has turned the violence of British colonization
into an ‘empowering’ experience for Hong Kong colonized.”
17
After the political
turmoil of the 1960s, the British government, being aware of what was going on in
communist China, initiated a liberalist colonial policy of laissez-faire and social non-
interventionism. This was not only to help Hong Kong weather economic and political
crises but also to secure Britain’s economic interests in the Far East. Consequently,
Hong Kong enjoyed freedom of speech and trade, and came to experience economic
prosperity in the 1980s and the 1990s. Hong Kong grew up from a mere colony to an
international center for finance and commerce.
18
In this way, the British colonialist
regime successfully propagated its existence as a modernizer that turned Hong Kong
from a small fishing village into a free, liberal, modern, and wealthy global city.
Furthermore, as Ackbar Abbas notes, Hong Kong’s postcoloniality precedes
decolonization.
19
Hong Kong earned “independence” without a bloody, violent
decolonization struggle. In The Wretched of the Earth, Frantz Fanon argues that
decolonization is always a violent phenomenon and that only violence of the masses
and the peasants, not “a green baize table” negotiation between colonial bourgeois and

17
Yuk-Lin Renita Wong, “Going ‘Back’ and Staying ‘Out’: Articulating the Postcolonial Hong Kong
Subjects in the development of China,” Journal of Contemporary China 11.30 (2002): 141.
18
Natalia Chan Sui Hung, “Rewriting History: Hong Kong Nostalgia Cinema and its Social Practice,”
in The Cinema of Hong Kong: History, Arts, Identity. ed. Poshek Fu, David Desser. (New York:
Cambridge University Press, 2000), 254.
19
Ackbar Abbas, Hong Kong: Culture and the Politics of Disappearance (Hong Kong: University of
Minnesota Press, 1997), 6.
20
national bourgeois, would bring true independence to the colonized.
20
However, in the
case of Hong Kong, the postcolonial was reserved and guaranteed without any bloody
decolonization struggle. In 1984, based on mutual political and economic interests,
Britain and the People’s Republic of China signed the Sino-British Joint Declaration
that promised the peaceful return of Hong Kong to Chinese sovereignty in 1997.
What is truly unique about postcolonial Hong Kong is its relationship to China.
Historically Hong Kong has been a refugee camp for mainland émigrés. During the
civil war between Mao Zedong and Chiang Kai-shek (1927-1950) and the Cultural
Revolution of 1965-1976, mainlanders were driven out to Hong Kong. People who
were uncertain of their futures under the communist regime flooded the colony even
though Hong Kong did not guarantee them a rosy future. Under such circumstances,
the handover to China was not considered liberation to most Hong Kong people.
Rather, it was “the end of one colonial era and the beginning of another.”
21
In fact, the
handover had nothing to do with Hong Kong’s national sentiments or wishes. To
Hong Kong people, China meant another colonizer, not a mother country. British
colonial policy taught Hong Kong people to identify with the glory of Chinese
civilization “in the remote past” and yet disconnect from contemporary communist
China. China was imagined as their cultural roots to which they desired to return, but

20
Constance Farrington, trans., The Wretched of the Earth (New York: Grove Press, 1963), 61.
21
Esther C.M. Yau, introduction to At Full Speed: Hong Kong cinema in a Borderless World, ed. Esther
C.M. Yau (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2001), 16.
21
the actual Republic of China was constructed as a space of oppression and
backwardness.
22

Thus, 1997 was a year of trauma, a source of anxiety, and a deadline of
freedom, not a happy event to celebrate for Hong Kong people. In particular, the
Tiananmen Square Massacre of June 1989 drove Hong Kong anxiety to extremes. The
incident, in which the People’s Liberation Army crushed the student demonstrators
who had been protesting corruption and the lack of civil liberties in China, “struck
Hong Kong like a thunderbolt.”
23
Hundreds of people were killed, and in the following
months many more were executed and imprisoned. Hong Kong people were shocked
and wondered, “What would life be like under this regime?”
24
The motto of “one
country, two systems” was not enough to suppress Hong Kong’s anxiety and paranoia
because people commonly believed that Hong Kong and China went down two
different paths: one socialist country, one capitalist colonial city. It not only indicated
a difference between politics and economics, but also a wide gap between culture and
identity that would not easily be bridged.
However, the anxiety and paranoia of Hong Kong did not work only as a
negative force. Rather, its unique history has brought a vital energy to the
development of Hong Kong culture. In his book Hong Kong: Culture and the Politics
of Disappearance, Ackbar Abbas argues that once a “cultural desert,” Hong Kong has

22
Wong, 147.
23
David Bordwell, Planet Hong Kong: Popular Cinema and the Art of Entertainment (Cambridge,
Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2000), 31.
24
Ibid., 31.
22
developed a truly original Hong Kong culture out of “a space of disappearance.”
25

According to him, the imminence of its disappearance precipitated an intense and
unprecedented interest in Hong Kong culture. But the irony is that this appearance of
culture is also posited on the imminence of its disappearance; as soon as the Hong
Kong culture appears, it is ironically threatened to disappear because Hong Kong
would not exist as it is. Thus, “we are witnessing certainly not the disappearance of
culture, but ‘some original and yet untheorized’ form of culture,” what Abbas
proposes to describe as “a culture of disappearance.”
26

The Characteristics of Hong Kong Cinema
The peculiar colonial history of Hong Kong described above is embedded in
Hong Kong cinema in many ways. Thus, Hong Kong cinema has many unique
characteristics that distinguish it from other national cinemas.
First, unlike other colonized lands, Hong Kong was not compelled to develop
revolutionary cinema. Rather, benefiting from Britain liberalist policy of laissez-faire,
the Hong Kong film industry committed itself to highly commercial filmmaking. On
one hand, since its birth Hong Kong cinema has successfully emulated Hollywood in
genre filmmaking (mainly, action, comedy, and erotica), the vertical studio system,
and star marketing. On the other hand, it has developed through the use of unique
industrial practices such as a patriarchal production system, un-professionalism, cheap

25
Abbas, 1-15.
26
Ibid., 7.
23
labor, low cost, fast and quick shooting, and brief circulation. These two sets of
characteristics were not separable from Hong Kong’s identity as a liminal space
between West and the East, capitalism and communism, or modernity and tradition.
Combining a semi-Hollywood system with its own distinctive practices, Hong Kong
cinema invented “the language of detached, borderless enjoyment even as they make
references to local events and conditions.”
27

Second, the Hong Kong film industry was initially built by the hands of
mainland émigrés and Chinese diasporic people. From the 1920s to 1940s, the center
of Chinese filmmaking was Shanghai in mainland China. However, political
upheavals such as the Communist seizure of power in 1949 drove film companies and
film professionals to flee to Hong Kong. They brought mainland cultures and
languages as well as their talents to Hong Kong. Among others, they launched martial
arts cinema, wuxia pian in Chinese, which became the signature of Hong Kong
cinema.
In the meantime, those Chinese émigrés who escaped to other parts of Asia
such as Taiwan, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, the Philippines, and
Vietnam played significant roles in the development of Hong Kong cinema as well.
Since the 1930s, they comprised Hong Kong’s overseas markets. Without having any
entertainment to enjoy in foreign lands, the Chinese diaspora regularly consumed
Hong Kong films. Mostly made by émigrés, Hong Kong films offered familiar cultural

27
Yau, 2.
24
pleasures to homesick Chinese living abroad. As such, the domestic and foreign
markets had already been inseparably intertwined in Hong Kong cinema from the
early days.
Meanwhile, rich diasporic capitalists became major investors of Hong Kong
cinema. The studio systems were built by pan-Asian Chinese corporations, which
headquartered either in Singapore or Shanghai. Given this powerful influence from the
Hong Kong diaspora, it is no wonder Hong Kong’s popular movie stars were often
recruited from diasporic populations– to name a few, Michelle Yeoh from Malaysia,
Brigitte Lin, Joey Wang, and Chang Chen from Taiwan. In short, Hong Kong cinema
started as an emigrant or “diasporic” cinema.
Third, Hong Kong cinema has eagerly pursued intercultural exchanges and co-
productions with other film industries. During the 1960s and 70s, Hong Kong cinema
developed unique relations with neighboring countries such as Japan and South Korea.
It is well known that the 1960s Mandarin swordplay films were influenced by
Japanese jidai-geki (historical films). Hong Kong filmmakers studied the styles of
Japanese samurai films, particularly the popular Zatoichi, the blind swordsman series.
Shaw Brothers even sent staff members to Japan to study production methods and hire
Japanese directors and cameramen.
28
This collaboration brought new changes in the
narrative and action spectacle of Hong Kong martial arts cinema. The frequent duel
sequences between Chinese and Japanese martial artists (kung fu vs. karate or kung fu

28
Bordwell, 206.
25
vs. samurai sword) were newly installed but they were often shot in different versions
for individual markets. Meagan Morris notes that the co-produced films were often
released with different endings in each country. For example, Zatoichi and the One-
Armed Swordsman (1970) was released in Japan with Zatoichi’s victory, while the
one-armed swordsman won for Chinese markets.
29

The South Korean influence on Hong Kong cinema is relatively unknown. A
handful of South Korean directors and stuntmen were working in the Hong Kong film
industry in the 1960s. In fact, it was Korean filmmaker Chung Chang Hwa (known
also as Jeng Cheong) who directed Five Fingers of Death, the first kung fu film that
hit the American screen. Working for Shaw Brothers and later for Golden Harvest,
director Chung made many remarkable Hong Kong martial arts films, including
Temptress with a Thousand Faces (1969), Valley of the Fangs (1970), and The Devil’s
Treasure (1973). During this time, Korea was also a popular location site for Hong
Kong runaway productions. King Hu’s Raining in the Mountain (1979) and Legend of
the Mountains (1979) both were shot in Korea.
From the 1970s the Hong Kong film industry has attempted to co-produce with
Western film industries. After the success of Golden Harvest-Warner co-production
Enter the Dragon (1972, USA), many Hong Kong companies flew to Western
countries to shoot films such as The Man from Hong Kong (1975, Australia), Making
Money (1975, Italy), The Amsterdam Kill (1977, USA), The Boys in Company C

29
Morris, 185.
26
(1978, USA), and Battle Creek Brawl (1980, USA). As Leon Hunt notes, the division
of labor was clear in these productions. The involvement of Hong Kong professionals
was limited to action choreography while Westerners were mainly responsible for the
important production parts such as directing.
30
However, as Stephen Teo argues, “it
illustrates Hong Kong cinema’s inherent transnationalism and its early efforts to tap
into the international market using the kung fu action genre as its main conduit.”
31

Without doubt, the international cooperation and coproduction led to the successful
exports of Hong Kong films to foreign countries.
Finally, the character of the action heroine in martial arts films is one of the
most important characteristics of Hong Kong cinema. As Bey Logan puts it, “Contrary
to the Western perception of Chinese culture as chauvinistic in the extreme, Eastern
cinema has featured an extraordinary number of women warriors compared to
Hollywood. Tinseltown has long since relegated women to the stereotypes of victim,
prize or queen bitch, whereas Hong Kong actioners have always featured fighting
females doing battle with the menfolk on an equal footing.”
32

Women warriors on screen originated from the unique Chinese history and art
forms such as wu xia literature, legends, and fork lore. With the birth of cinema, the
popular stories of Mulan, Yim Wing Chun, and Ng Mui were transformed on film
screens and they composed an important martial arts subgenre. According to Zhang

30
Leon Hunt, “The Hong Kong/Hollywood Connection: Stardom and Spectacle in Transnational Action
Cinema,” in Action and Adventure Cinema, ed. Yvonne Tasker (New York: Routledge, 2004), 270.
31
Stephen Teo, “Australia’s Role in the Global Kung Fu Trend: The Man From Hong Kong,” Senses of
Cinema (2001), http://www.sensesofcinema.com/contents/cteq/01/16/man_hk.html.
32
Bey Logan, Hong Kong Action Cinema (Overlook TP, 1996), 153.
27
Zhen, sixteen films made in Shanghai from 1925 to 1931 featured martial arts
heroines.
33
After the center of Chinese filmmaking moved from Shanghai to Hong
Kong, the Hong Kong film industry produced many martial arts heroine films, and
new female action stars were born in each period – to name a few, Cheng Pei Pei in
the 1960s, Angela Mao Ying in the 1970s, Michelle Yeoh in the 1980s, and Brigitte
Lin in the 1990s. In fact, Cheng Pei Pei was cast as Jade Fox in Crouching Tiger
Hidden Dragon in memory of her roles in King Hu’s epic Come Drink with Me
(1966).

Michelle Yeoh, better known as Michelle Kwan in Hong Kong, was a big
action star in Asia before being cast in Tomorrow Never Dies (1997) and Crouching
Tiger Hidden Dragon. Her famous action movies include Yes Madame (1985), Royal
Warriors (1986), Heroic Trio (1993), Super Cop (1993), and Wing Chun (1994).
It is interesting that the so-called “girls and guns” genre in the 1980s, a modern
version of female martial arts genre, imported many female foreigners across the
ocean – to name a few, Yukari Oshima, Michiko Nishiwaki from Japan, Agnes
Aurelio from the Philippines, Cynthia Rothrock and Karen Sheperd from the U.S.,
Sophia Crawford from Britain, Kim Maree Penn from Australia, and Joyce Godenzi
from Europe. They usually played the role of female cop who mastered martial arts as

33
Zhang Zhen, “Bodies in the Air: The Magic of Science and the Fate of the Early “Martial Arts” Film
in China,” Post Script 20 (2&3): 52-5.
28
well as guns. In that respect, the female action genre was more multi-racial and multi-
national than its male counterpart genre in the 1980s.
34

Among others, the career of Cynthia Rothrock is noteworthy. She made many
popular action films with famous Hong Kong professionals such as Cory Yuen,
Sammo Hung and Yuen Biao. Her films Yes Madam (1985, co-starring Michelle
Yeoh), Righting Wrongs (1986), Shanghai Express (1986), and No Retreat No
Surrender 2 (1988) became classic martial arts movies. Interestingly, she began her
acting career first in Hong Kong then later was reversely exported to the Hollywood B
action movie market. After her successful Hong Kong films, Golden Harvest decided
to launch her career in the U.S. by making the China O'Brien series. The series was
not as successful as her Hong Kong films but she began to work for many Hollywood
B action movies made for television or the direct-to-video market. Since she was
almost the only white female martial arts star in a male-dominated genre in the 1980s,
she prospered, earning the reputation of “Kung-fu Video Queen.”

The Characteristics of Hong Kong Martial Arts Cinema
Without doubt, the martial arts genre best exemplifies the unique quality of
postcolonial Hong Kong and Hong Kong cinema. First, it was launched by émigré
directors. The first martial-arts films were silent fantasy swordplay movies produced
by Shanghai studios in the 1920s. By blending martial arts techniques with Chinese

34
Kwai-cheung Lo, “Fighting Female Masculinity: Women Warriors and Their Foreignness in Hong
Kong Action Cinema of the 1980s,” in Masculinities and Hong Kong Cinema, ed. Laikwan Pang and
Day Wong. (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2005), 151.
29
acrobatic and theatrical Opera traditions, martial arts filmmakers created flamboyantly
stylized combats on screen. They also borrowed the narratives and character types
from martial arts literature and folktales. Several martial arts novelists worked as
screenwriters of martial arts films. Once filmmakers moved to Hong Kong, Hong
Kong began to hold a monopoly on martial arts filmmaking. Because of the film
censorship codes and Mao’s new cinema policies, both of which claimed that martial
arts cinema was promoting superstition and the supernatural, there was virtually no
room for martial arts filmmaking in mainland China anymore.
Second, martial arts cinema was the filmic genre to best fulfill the nostalgia of
Chinese diasporic audiences scattered in Asia. As Roger Garcia puts it, Hong Kong
martial arts movies have been produced by and for the Chinese communities outside
mainland China. They can be read as “films of mythic remembrance, an emigrant
cinema for an audience seeking not only its identity and links with an often imaginary
cultural past, but also its legitimization.”
35

Third, martial arts films can be read as “national allegory.” The fictional world
of swordplay films – the world of jianghu (literally, “rivers and lakes”) – resembles
Hong Kong itself: the space of the exile/refugee. Most heroes in martial arts films are
outlaws, often banished from the ordinary world. They have ambivalent feelings about
their belonging to the jianghu: they feel sentimental about being separated from the
rest of the world, but they accept it as their fate. It may be the same for people of the

35
Roger Garcia, “Alive and Kicking: The Kung Fu Film is a Legend,” Bright Light 31 (January 2001),
http://www.brightlightsfilm.com/31/hk_alive.html.
30
Chinese diaspora: they would feel nostalgic for their homeland but they accept new
life in foreign lands as their fate. Thus, martial arts movies cannot be simply dismissed
as portraying a fantasy space. Rather, the space represented in swordplay films is the
allegoric space of Hong Kong. This probably explains why martial arts cinema has
been so popular with Hong Kong’s national audience.
Finally, Hong Kong’s peculiar identity is embedded in the interesting cyclical
phenomenon of the development of martial arts cinema on two levels. On one level,
the history of martial arts cinema is an interesting “push-and-pull” interplay between
two sub-genres: the kung fu film (unarmed martial arts) and the swordplay film (wuxia
pian, armed martial arts). These are not mutually exclusive categories since kung fu is
the basic skill for armed martial arts as well. In many swordplay movies, kung fu and
swordplay are often mixed. It was not until the advent of Bruce Lee’s kung fu films
that the unarmed combat film would be distinguished from swordplay films. However,
this division is still useful in the discussion of the development of martial arts cinema,
especially in relation to two difference modes of martial arts filmmaking: realistic and
fantastic modes. Each subgenre does not exclusively correspond with each mode, but
in general the kung fu subgenre is shot in a realistic mode whereas the swordplay
subgenre is shot in a fantastic mode. Since the kung fu subgenre emphasizes fighting
skills with bare hands there is not much room for technical intervention such as
wireworks. On the contrary, the swordplay subgenre deals with supernatural stories
and presents superheroes who have magical abilities such as flying, palm power, and
31
weightless leaps; technical gimmicks such as wireworks and special effects are
necessary. Accordingly, action in the kung fu subgenre looks more realistic than that
of swordplay films.
On another level, the development of martial arts cinema is the result of the
dynamic cyclical rise and fall of two dialect cinemas: Cantonese (the local Hong Kong
dialect and part of Southern China, primarily Guangdong and Guangxi) and Mandarin
(the more widely spoken Chinese dialect in mainland and overseas Chinese
populations). The language issue is important because, as I discussed already, Hong
Kong cinema stands as a “diasporic” cinema. In consideration of its mainland and
overseas diasporic audiences, Hong Kong cinema had to make films in Mandarin as
well.

The History of Hong Kong Martial Arts Cinema
When Shanghai directors fled to Hong Kong in the 1930s they made martial
arts movies in the Cantonese dialect to build a Hong Kong local identity. The majority
of the films were fantasy-oriented films based on literary adaptations or adaptations of
previously popular Shanghai productions. In the 1940s and 1950s, Hong Kong cinema
dropped many of the fantasy elements and created realistic Cantonese kung fu films
such as the Huang Feihong series. Based on an actual historical figure, Huang Feihong
(1847-1924), the series consisted of almost ninety films, becoming the world’s
32
longest-running film series. The early 1960s was a time to return to the fantastic: a
golden age of Cantonese sword films featuring magical airborne combats and flights.
However, in the late 1960s the Shaw Brothers studio launched “new wuxia
pian,” Mandarin martial arts films, which were more violent and realistic. The famous
two directors of new wuxia pian were King Hu and Zhang Che. King Hu’s Come
Drink with Me(1966) and Dragon Gate Inn(1967) featured Peking Opera-influenced
action choreography, which inspired many subsequent martial arts films, such as Tsui
Hark’s Zu: Warriors from the Magic Mountain (1983) and Ang Lee’s Crouching
Tiger Hidden Dragon. With A Touch of Zen winning the Technical Prize at the 1975
Cannes Film Festival, King Hu became more famous and earned a reputation as a
master of the martial arts epic.
However, David Desser argues that King Hu is somewhat overrated compared
to Zhang Che. He points out that it was Zhang Che who had an immediate impact on
subsequent martial arts films such as those with Bruce Lee, which came to dominate
Hong Kong cinema as well as world film markets in the early 1970s. According to
him, while King Hu was still focused on the female star system of the 1960s and made
feminist-oriented films, Zhang Che broke away from the system. Che began a new
tradition of male-oriented martial arts cinema featuring new male stars, such as Jimmy
Wang Yu, David Chiang, and Ti Lung. As a prolific director, Zhang Che made over
60 films, including the famous The One-Armed Swordsman (1966) and Golden
Swallow (1967), mostly at Shaw Brothers. His films are known to have influenced
33
directors of male-oriented violent films such as Lau Kar-leung, John Woo, Ringo Lam
and Quentin Tarantino.
As King Hu and Zhang Che had different film orientation, their heroism
sharply contrasted. Zhang Che’s films showcase “masochistic heroism out of
vigorous, often brutal action.”
36
Zhang Che’s heroes often get mutilated and they fight
for revenge and compulsive male honor. On the contrary, King Hu portrays knight-
errants, idealistic heroes who are selfless and fight for a cause to protect the weak and
innocent people. They both attracted huge audiences, not only in Hong Kong but also
in foreign markets, including Southeast Asia, South America, and Chinese
communities in Europe.
However, it was not until in the 1970s that Hong Kong martial arts cinema was
discovered by the West through the worldwide success of Bruce Lee’s kung fu films.
Since then, Hong Kong cinema became so identified with the kung fu genre that Hong
Kong appeared to produce nothing else.
37
Although Bruce Lee seemed to limit the
perception of Hong Kong cinema outside Hong Kong there is no doubt that it is his
kung fu that made Hong Kong cinema globally popular. The worldwide success of his
kung fu films changed the direction of Hong Kong martial arts cinema.
First, as “a true-to-life fighter” Lee popularized the realistic hand-to-hand
combat kung fu films. He believed that kung fu in cinema should not be different from
the real kung fu he practiced. By adding genuine kung fu skills to action choreography,

36
Bordwell, 248.
37
Stephen Teo, “Local and Global Identity: Whither Hong Kong Cinema?” Senses of Cinema (2000),
http://www.sensesofcinema.com/contents/00/7/hongkong.html.
34
he created the most believable and remarkable action scenes. Second, as a successor of
the Southern Chinese fighting style Wing Chun Lee used the Cantonese term “kung
fu” to emphasize his local Hong Kong identity. It was after him that the term “kung
fu” became popular to signify Hong Kong martial arts. However, his films were
dubbed and released in Mandarin for overseas diaspora audiences. Finally, after Bruce
Lee Hong Kong cinema became more export-oriented. Grace Leung and Joseph Chan
note that Bruce Lee’s films were distributed not only in Asia but also in Europe, South
America, and Africa. They popularized the kung fu genre worldwide, beyond Chinese
diasporic communities.
Between 1971 and 1973, when the ‘China Fad’ was at its height, it was
estimated that about 300 kung fu films were produced primarily for the
international market. Some films relied entirely on the overseas market
and were never released in Hong Kong. At that period of time, local
box-office only accounted for ¼ of the total revenue.
38
However, Lee’s sudden death in 1973 halted the fast growth of Hong Kong
martial arts cinema. Imitators followed Bruce Lee but they failed to capture the quality
of Lee’s kung fu films. It was not until the early 1980s that martial arts cinema revived
by modernizing itself. The martial arts genre used to be a period drama set in ancient
or pre-modern society. However, recasting martial arts in the contemporary action-
adventure or crime genre, Hong Kong cinema could recover from the damage of Lee’s
death. I argue that after this stage, Hong Kong cinema deserves to be called truly

38
Grace Leung and Joseph Chan, “The Hong Kong Cinema and Its Overseas Market: A Historical
Review, 1950-1995,” Fifty Years of Electric Shadows (Hong Kong: Hong Kong International Film
Festival, 1997), 145.
35
“global” cinema, beyond “diasporic” cinema. Among others, Jackie Chan, John Woo,
Tsui Hark, and Jet Li played important roles in this process.
The rapid spread of home video technology, the dispersion of VCRs, and the
inception of direct-to-video markets in the 1980s helped Hong Kong cinema circulate
beyond Chinatowns in western countries. Most Hong Kong films were rarely or never
screened in mainstream theatres but reached American audiences by video.
39
The
Hong Kong cinema cult fandom was soon established. David Bordwell points out that
violence, exploitation, and nuttiness in Hong Kong cinema attract the world’s
subcultural audiences.
40
He claims that Hong Kong films offer down-market pleasures
that Hollywood films do not supply – especially, Hong Kong cinema’s unique manner
of arousing emotion kinesthetically through action and music is something that other
cinemas cannot imitate.
41
Bordewell argues that Hong Kong cinema amplifies
astonishing movements of the body through its unique use of camera movement,
cutting, image composition, editing, color and sound.
42
Jackie Chan launched his career through traditional martial arts films set in
ancient times such as Snake in Eagle’s Shadow (1978) and Drunken Master (1978).
However, Chan expanded the scope of kung fu action to appeal to modern audiences.
He blended the genre with other genres such as cop drama (Police Story), spy thrillers

39
Morris, 185-6. She further argues that the direct-to-video markets created space for American martial
arts films such as those of Chuck Norris, Jean-Claude van Damme, Steven Seagal, and Cynthia
Rothrock.
40
Bordwell, 1-8.
41
Ibid., 92.
42
Ibid., 220.
36
(First Strike, Mr. Nice Guy, Who Am I?), adventure film (Project A, Armour of God),
and even manga (City Hunter). Steve Fore notes that the emergence of Chan’s kung fu
comedy in the 1980s coincided with the emergence of modern urbanism.
43
This was
the time when Hong Kong transformed from a colonial backwater to a rapidly
modernizing and fast-paced urban capitalist society. The young and new urban
audiences who were less connected to Chinese tradition or to China itself found more
interest in Chan’s kung fu comedy set in modern times than in traditional martial arts
films. Chan’s failure in Hollywood markets in the early 1980s pushed him to focus on
Asian markets and he began to insist on as high a level of production values as found
in Hollywood. Chan pursued making international films without Hong Kong cultural
specificity, which resulted in globalizing Hong Kong action cinema. I will discuss
more about Chan’s cosmopolitanism in Chapter 4.
John Woo’s so-called “heroic bloodshed cinema” of the 1980s is another
example of modernizing martial arts films. His A Better Tomorrow (1986), A better
Tomorrow II (1988), and the Killer (1989) are considered modern-dress versions of
old martial arts movies. Some of the plot and characters, and the Chinese title of A
better Tomorrow, derived from an earlier martial arts film The Essence of Heroes
(1967) directed by Lung Kong.
44
The difference is that A better Tomorrow’s

43
Steve Fore, “Life Imitates Entertainment: Home and Dislocation in the Films of Jackie Chan” in At
Full Speed:Hong Kong Cinema in a Borderless World. ed. Esther C.M.Yau (Minneapolis: Minnesota
University Press, 2001), 122-6.
44
Li Cheuk-to, “The Return of the Father: Hong Kong New Wave and its Chinese Context in the
1980s,” in New Chinese Cinemas: Forms, Identities, Politics. ed. Nick Browne, Paul G.Pickowicz,
Vivian Sobchack, and Esther Yau (Cambridge University Press, 1996), 176.
37
characters use guns instead of swords. In fact, Woo launched his film career as an
assistant director for Zhang Che and debuted with a traditional martial arts film, The
Young Dragons (1974), which was choreographed by Jackie Chan. In the interview,
Woo pointed out the influence of old martial arts filmmaking on his cinematic world.
When I shoot gunfight films I use the same feelings as in a martial arts
film. Only I use double guns in place of the sword. For example, the
layout of my scenes character design and those action designs are all
very close to Chang Che’s martial arts film style. The heroes in my
films shoot many times continuously and people get hit continuously.
That feeling has the Chang Che’s martial arts film’s shadow. When I
deal with my hero his stance as he holds the gun and his views of the
gun is the same as the heroes’ in the martial arts film but he holds a
sword. How he uses his sword and the way he sees his sword the
feeling is exactly the same. So my personality will forever stand on the
side of justice.
45

His male protagonist, best represented by Chow Yun-fat, is a contemporary
version of the Chinese chivalric knight hero from old martial arts novels and Chinese
popular imaginations. He embodies Confucian values such as loyalty, courage,
integrity, self-sacrifice, justice, individual freedom, generosity and contempt for
wealth. Blending traditional martial arts elements (revenge plot and chivalric heroism)
with modern production values, John Woo created a new kind of heroism and action
style that fascinated young audiences. The cult phenomenon of A Better Tomorrow in
South Korea, for instance, was historical. Every young Korean male tried to imitate
Chow Yun-fat by chewing matchsticks, wearing a trench coat, inhaling lighter gas,
and smiling, talking and walking like him. The film’s atypical success led to more
imports of Hong Kong action films in Korea. Korean journalists and critics discovered

45
From the DVD The Art of Action: Martial Arts in Motion Picture. 2002. Directed by Keith. R. Clarke.
38
something very different in Hong Kong gangster films and coined the term “Hong
Kong Noir” to conceptualize the peculiarly pessimistic energy and allegorical
implications.
46
Meanwhile, it was The Killer (1990) that established Woo’s cult status
in the West. After the screening at the Cannes Film Festival, the film achieved both
critical acclaim and commercial success.
The worldwide John Woo cult phenomenon called Hollywood’s attention to
this anonymous Hong Kong director and finally issued him an invitation to Hollywood.
Since 1993 Woo has assimilated himself into mainstream Hollywood by making a
series of successful action blockbuster, such as Hard Target (1993), Broken Arrow
(1996), Face/Off (1997), and Mission Impossible II (2000). As the budgetary scale he
could utilize increased, so did his fame as an Asian director, and through this success
story of a minority director in Hollywood, he became “a biographical legend.”
47

Although the failure of Windtalker (2002) damaged his reputation he still deserves
serious attention.
Born in 1948 in Guangdong, soon after the Communist revolution, John Woo
fled to Hong Kong with his family. Woo had a harrowing childhood: the family
homeless, the father tubercular, a neighborhood of gang warfare and wretched
poverty.
48
But thanks to American donations to the Lutheran church, he was able to go

46
Jinsoo An, “The Killer: Cult Film and Transcultural (Mis)Reading,” in At Full Speed: Hong Kong
Cinema in a Borderless World, ed. Esther C.M. Yau. (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press,
2001), 105.
47
Bordwell, 98.
48
Ibid., 98.
39
to school and end up not being a gangster but “a fervent Christian.”
49
Torn between
street violence and Christian faith, his lived experience became a central vision to his
movies. This is why tags such as “contradictions,” “paradox,” or “irony” follow him.
Bliss states “John Woo is a man of contradictions. He’s a romantic Christian idealist
who loves guns and explosions. He’s a man of peace who choreographs death and
destruction better than anyone working in movies today.”
50
As much as western
religious symbolism (such as a redemption theme or images of Pieta and doves)
appears in his films, the influence of traditional Chinese themes and motifs also
occupy his screens. Exiled from mainland China to Hong Kong, having a sentiment of
being shorn of a homeland, and leading a difficult life during the rapid transformation
of Hong Kong, John Woo came to treasure Chinese heritage and envisioned Chinese
traditional values as essential virtues to Hong Kong people who were exposed to
Western influences. Given that, it is ironic that he has become the luckiest beneficiary
of Hollywood capitalism. As The New York Times puts it, “Woo in some ways
embodies the globalizing forces that have shaped motion pictures in the last two
decades.”
51

“John Woo’s great compatriot, erstwhile collaborator, and current rival,”
52

Tsui Hark, is another representative director of Hong Kong cinema. As a producer of

49
Stephen Teo, Hong Kong Cinema: The Extra Dimensions (London: BFI, 1997), 174.
50
Michael Bliss, Between The Bullets: The Spiritual Cinema Of John Woo (Lanham, MD: The
Scarecrow Press, 2002), 1.
51
Dave Kehr, “For John Woo, the Auteur of Action, a Thoughtful Return,” The New York Times, June 9,
2002.
52
Teo, Hong Kong Cinema, 143.
40
A Better Tomorrow I, II and director of A Better Tomorrow III, Tsui played a
significant role in launching John Woo’s career. In fact, as Grady Hendrix notes, he
created most of the Hong Kong stars – not to mention John Woo, Chow Yun-fat, Jet
Li, Ching Siu-tung, and Brigitte Lin. Stephen Teo notes that like John Woo, Tsui Hark
has gone to Hollywood thanks to his proven talents in commercial filmmaking and
cult status in the West. However, compared to Woo, Tsui Hark’s career in Hollywood
was short-lived. Tsui Hark went through the same test of making B action movies with
Jean Claude Van Damme – Double Team (1997) and Knockoff (1998) – as John Woo
was tested by Hard Target with the same actor. However, unlike Woo, who secured
his position, Tsui Hark failed the test and ended his brief career in Hollywood.
However, Tsui Hark is one of the significant filmmakers who developed Hong
Kong cinema. His contribution to global Hong Kong cinema cannot be dismissed.
Tsui Hark began his film career as one of the Hong Kong New Wave directors. Unlike
New Waves in France, Germany, and Japan that were directly related to political
upheaval in the 1960s and 70s, Hong Kong New Wave emerged in 1979 from a
general lack of sociopolitical and cultural uncertainty. The New Wave directors such
as Ann Hui, Allen Fong, Patrick Tam, Yim Ho, and Alex Cheung were different from
the former émigré directors from Shanghai. They were genuinely local filmmakers
who were born, reared, and educated in the territory.
53
Thus, they took Hong Kong as

53
Li Cheuk-to, 161.
41
their subject and turned away from martial arts filmmaking. They tackled instead
contemporary social and psychological problems.
54

Tsui Hark’s background was more complicated than that of other New Wave
directors. As Sheng-mei Ma puts it, “like Hong Kong itself, Tsui Hark is a cultural
mixture; born in Vietnam, trained at film schools in the United States, and based in
Hong Kong, he is restlessly innovative and unabashedly commercial.”
55
His
Dangerous Encounter - 1st Kind (1980) directed during the New Wave period was
critically acclaimed for its experimental aesthetics. However, he soon moved into
mainstream commercial filmmaking. He was criticized as a “sell-out” yet he has
shown his talents in entertainment-oriented filmmaking, earning the title of the
“Steven Spielberg of Hong Kong.” Grady Hendrix notes that as a director and
producer, Tsui has made over 50 films, directing 31 of them, producing blockbusters
in the genres most identified with 1980s and 1990s Hong Kong cinema – heroic
bloodshed, fantasy swordplay, ghost romances, and period martial arts.
56
Thus, Hong
Kong critics call Tsui Hark’s talent a “devil’s talent (gui cai) – a talent so broad and
brilliant that it does not seem human.”
57
While Tsui Hark demonstrated versatile talents in different genres, he showed
the best expertise in reshaping old Chinese materials into modern entertainments. As

54
Bordwell, 69.
55
Sheng-mei Ma, “Kung Fu Films in Diaspora: Death of the Bamboo Hero,” in Masculinities and Hong
Kong Cinema, ed. Laikwan Pang and Day Wong (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2005), 111.
56
Grady Hendrix, “Tsui Hark,” Senses of Cinema (June 2003),
http://www.sensesofcinema.com/contents/directors/03/tsui.htmlsource.
57
Stephen Teo, “Tsui Hark: National Style and Polemic,” in At Full Speed: Hong Kong cinema in a
Borderless World, ed. Esther C.M. Yau. (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2001), 157.
42
Grady Hendrix puts it, “Tsui is an omnivorous re-maker, mining Chinese history and
culture for some of its most unpromising material and transforming it into panting pop
masterpieces, crackling with relevancy.”
58
The examples include Zu: Warriors from
the Magic Mountain (1983), Peking Opera Blues (1986), A Chinese Ghost Story
(1987), the Swordsman trilogy (1990-1993), Once upon a Time in China saga (1991-
1997), and The Blade (1995). As “one of the most imaginative stylists in
contemporary cinema”
59
Tsui invented a new style of martial arts cinema by bringing
in special effects, MTV-like editing style, quintessential characters, and the theme of
practical nationalism.
Among others, his Once upon a Time in China series, starring Jet Li as the
legendary Huang Feihong, deserves more attention. As “the old-fashioned kung fu
film bulked up with modern production values,”
60
the series is considered “one of the
major achievements of 1990s Hong Kong cinema.”
61
Many Western scholars have
written about its nationalistic hero and read the series in terms of national allegory.
Tony Williams argues that China in the film, which underwent a turbulent series of
changes under Western powers during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries,
forebodes the contemporary Hong Kong before the imminent reunification with China.
He wrote:

58
Hendrix.
59
Bordwell, 142.
60
Bordwell, 208.
61
Tony Williams, “Under ‘Western Eyes’: The Personal Odyssey of Huang Fei-Hong in Once Upon a
Time in China,” Cinema Journal 40 (1) (fall 2000) : 4.
43
Throughout the series, Hark implicitly argues for a realistic, open-
minded appraisal of issues affecting Chinese national identity and the
need for change and compromise. It is a message as relevant to the pre-
1997 population of Hong Kong as it is to Hark’s own fictional
reconstruction of Huang Fei-hong, who moves from a position of
cultural certainty to confront twentieth-century encroachments
affecting his previously secure sense of Chinese identity. In reuniting
with the motherland, the formerly lost orphan of Hong Kong faces
similar issues of cultural readjustment. Hark attempts to negotiate these
problems both allegorically and cinematically by using the figure of
Huang Fei-hong as a cultural focus who represents the problematic
aspects of cultural identity and the necessity for continual
readaptation.
62

As Tony Williams asserts, the Once upon a Time in China series suggested
open-minded and realistic attitudes towards a new future after the handover through a
modern nationalistic hero Huang Feihong (Huang Fei-hong). In the film, Huang
Feihong accepts that the Westernization of China is inevitable and willingly
participates in the change. He cuts his queue, the symbol of old China, and wears
Western costume in the end.
The Once Upon a Time in China series paved the way to stardom for Jet Li. As
a martial arts star who originally came from mainland China but made his career
through the Hong Kong film industry, Jet Li represents transnational Hong Kong
cinema. Born in Beijing in 1963, Jet Li began studying wushu (the Chinese term for
general martial arts) at the age of 8. According to publicity, he earned his English
nickname “Jet” by his wushu colleagues who wanted to express his speed in martial
arts. Jet Li won several wushu championships of China and became famous in the
nation. An interesting anecdote is that he was chosen for the Chinese wushu team that

62
Ibid., 5.
44
represented China and toured U.S. cities in 1974. It was one of the diplomatic gestures
of the times when Richard Nixon’s Peace Mission policy pursued peaceful relations
with Communist China. The wushu team demonstrated their skills in front of President
Nixon and Henry Kissinger on the White House lawn. Jet Li recalls that Nixon,
impressed by his performance, asked him whether he could be his bodyguard when he
grew up one day. He responded with nationalist fever: “No, I don’t want to protect any
individual. When I grow up, I want to defend my one billion Chinese countrymen!”
63

And his dream has come true albeit in a fictional cinematic world. After he retired
from wushu sport at 17 he began his acting career, and he has portrayed a nationalistic
hero who defends the Chinese everyman in many martial arts films, including the
Once Upon a Time in China series. Since his crossover to Hollywood Jet Li has made
many contemporary action films such as Lethal Weapon 4 (1998), Romeo Must Die
(2000), The One (2001), Kiss of the Dragon (2001), Cradle 2 the Grave (2003),
Unleashed (2005), and War (2007). Li even leaped into the video game industry with
Rise to Honor, a three-dimensional fighting video game developed by Sony Computer
Entertainment America (SCEA).
Unlike Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan, who pioneered the Hollywood markets
before him, Jet Li has not established a particular star image or action style in the West.
This has worked to his advantage. First, unlike Bruce Lee or Jackie Chan, whose roles
have been limited to an underdog hero or comic figure respectively, Jet Li has played

63
From Jet Li’s official website. http://www.jetli.com/jet/index.php?l=en&s=life&ss=essays&p=7
45
relatively various roles, from the evil Chinese for Lethal Weapon 4 to the good
Chinese for most of his Hollywood films. The One and War are particularly
interesting: in The One, Jet Li played two opposite characters, evil and good, whereas
in War (a.k.a. Rogue) he appears evil until the end of the film when the truth reveals
that he is, in fact, on the good side. Second, unlike Bruce Lee or Jackie Chan, who has
almost never been portrayed having romantic relations with women, Jet Li often gets
involved with women and earns their kiss. As a contemporary love story of Romeo
and Juliet set in multiracial and multicultural America, Romeo Must Die pairs Jet Li
with Aaliyah, the now deceased Black hip hop singer. They play a tragic couple
caught between African American and Chinese-American gang groups. In Kiss of the
Dragon and Unleashed, Jet Li falls in love with a white girl. Third, Jet Li’s action
style varies from film to film. When he debuted in Lethal Weapon 4 his action style
was much closer to martial arts. However, eventually Jet Li’s Hollywood action has
been aided with special effects and CGI-enhanced wires, sometimes too extremely, in
all subsequent Hollywood films. Both Romeo Must Die and Cradle 2 the Grave
featured “Matrix style martial arts,” as the film was produced by Joel Silver, who also
produced The Matrix. In War, Jet Li carries guns and fights in Western boxing style.
The film hardly capitalizes on his martial arts skills. While Jackie Chan wants to
continue his reputation as an action star who does all dangerous stunts by himself, Jet
Li has not proposed to do so himself. This gives Jet Li more flexibility to try different
46
action styles. In fact, Jet Li’s Hong Kong films, especially those directed by Tsui Hark,
already featured special effects-oriented kung fu action.
However, in spite of his growing popularity in the U.S., Jet Li remains
somewhat under the shadow of Bruce Lee or Jackie Chan. It is not surprising that in
his Hollywood films he is often called “Bruce” by other characters, merely because he
does kung fu. This first implies that in Hollywood, Bruce Lee still represents the
pinnacle of kung fu martial arts. On the other hand, Hollywood would have thought
using Lee’s name a smart way to introduce Jet Li to audiences: as the legacy of Bruce
Lee. Whether or not Jet Li is less successful than Bruce Lee or Jackie Chan, without
doubt he is a transnational kung fu star who travels freely between the Hong Kong and
Hollywood film industries.
Many scholars have discussed the transnationalism of Hong Kong cinema.
Ding-Tzann Lii argues that it is remarkable that, as a colony located at the Third world
periphery, Hong Kong has nevertheless created an “empire” in the film industry. He
calls it “a colonized empire” or “marginal imperialism.”
64
Likewise, Esther Yau
claims “Hong Kong movies are like small speedboats breaking the waves alongside a
daunting fleet of Hollywood Titanics, charging ahead on the basis of their irreverent
imagination, their unique mix of cultural references, and their reinvention of generic
elements.” Hong Kong cinema is truly an interesting site to examine the dynamic
politics between local and global cinema. As Meagan Morris puts it, Hong Kong

64
Ding-Tzann Lii, “A Colonized Empire: Reflections on the expansion of Hong Kong Films in Asian
countries,” in Trajectories: Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, ed. Kuan-Hsing Chen, Hsiu-Ling Kuo, Hans
Hang and Hsu Ming-Chu. (New York: Routledge, 1998), 136.
47
cinema can provide “a model of how to understand global cinema from a non-
American but cosmopolitan local context.”
65
Among other genres, martial arts cinema
has been at the center of Hong Kong cinema. It has been a most unique and powerful
tool to make Hong Kong cinema viable in Chinese diasporic communities as well as in
global markets. It has helped the Hong Kong film industry achieve its goal of global
recognition in competition with the most powerful player, the Hollywood empire.

65
Morris, 184.
48
Part 1: Globalizing Martial Arts: Hong Kong vs. Hollywood
Chapter 2: The History of Hollywood Martial Arts Cinema
The extreme popularity of the Hollywood sci-fi action film The Matrix in 1999
signaled the end of Hong Kong cinema’s monopoly of martial arts filmmaking. By
combining Hong Kong style wire action with Hollywood’s cutting-edge special effects
Matrix created digitalized kung fu action, the so-called “Matrix style martial arts.” Its
new action style, especially its “bullet time,” in which the action is captured in slow-
motion, thrilled global audiences. It engendered a new contemporary kung fu craze
across the globe. The phenomenal success of The Matrix coincided with or was
followed by other Hollywood martial arts films, such as Romeo Must Die (2000),
Charlie’s Angels (2000), Shanghai Noon (2000), The One (2001), Rush Hour 2 (2001),
Kiss of the Dragon (2001), The Tuxedo (2002), The Last Samurai (2003), Shanghai
Knights (2003), Bulletproof Monk (2003), Daredevil (2003), Cradle 2 Grave (2003),
Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle (2003), Kill Bill 1, 2 (2003, 4), Elektra (2004),
Unleashed (2005), Rush Hour 3 (2007), and War (2007). Some would call this an
“Asian invasion,” or the “Hong Kongification” of Hollywood.
Hollywood’s appropriation of Asian martial arts has a long history. Embodied
in either Asian or white bodies, Asian martial arts such as jujitsu, judo, karate, hapkido,
kung fu, and Taekwondo have captured the attention of the American audiences since
the silent era. The development of American martial arts cinema is worthwhile to note
49
since it reflects shifting U.S.-Asia relations over time as well as the domestic politics
of race, gender and sexuality. This chapter offers a historical review of American
martial arts cinema from the silent era to today.

The Early History: Representation of Japanese Martial Arts
Before Bruce Lee hit the American screens with kung fu it was mostly
Japanese martial arts that were popular on Hollywood screens. Silent films such as
Peggy Does Her Darndest (1919), A Dangerous Affair (1919), The Outside Woman
(1921), and The Ladybird (1927) were among the early films that introduced Japanese
jujitsu. The action scenes in which either white women or Japanese servants practicing
jujitsu were used to add exotic flavor to films that mostly concerned mystery and
adventure related to Oriental artifacts. The representation of jujitsu continued to the
popular Mr. Moto film series in the 1930s. They present an international detective, Mr.
Moto, as a man of Japanese descent who has secret jujitsu skills.
The war with Japan after Pearl Harbor further engendered interest in Japanese
martial arts, but in a negative way. It is ironic that while hundreds of thousands of
Japanese Americans were interned in relocation camps, many second generation Nisei
Japanese Americans taught judo as the science of the enemy’s arts in the American
military in order to prove their loyalty to the U.S. Interestingly, judo was permitted to
be practiced at the internment camps, yet kendo was prohibited. A few Americans
even visited camp dojos to improve their judo techniques. As judo was regularly
50
taught to empower American soldiers during and after the World War II, Hollywood
responded by making anti-Japanese propaganda films or postwar Occupation films
with judo motifs. Films such as Behind the Rising Sun (1943), Gung Ho! (1943),
Blood on the Sun (1945), Tokyo Joe (1949), and Sands of Iwo Jima (1949) had judo
fights and training sequences. They presented Hollywood’s popular stars such as
James Cagney, Humphrey Bogart, and John Wayne as judo experts who could beat the
Japanese with their excellence in judo. These films were used to inspire American
patriotism.
In 1951, the U.S. and Japan signed the San Francisco Peace Treaty, which
ended the American occupation of Japan. Gradually, hostility towards Japan toned
down, and Japanese martial arts began to be re-introduced – this time, not as the
enemy’s arts but as proper training beneficial to American soldiers and civilians. After
World War II, the U.S. built a military base in Okinawa, Japan, which was the biggest
military base in Asia. It played a significant role as a strategic location for American
military training and R&R during the Korean War (1950-1953) and the Vietnam War
in subsequent years. Okinawa became the major site where American soldiers
encountered karate, Okinawan martial arts. Returning U.S. servicemen opened karate
schools in several U.S. cities and organized martial arts tournaments to promote their
schools and karate. By the 1960s and 1970s, tournaments were frequently held in U.S.
on a college, local, regional, and even national basis.
66
In short, the growth of karate in

66
Max J. Skidmore, “Oriental Contributions to Western Popular Culture: The Martial Arts,” Journal of
Popular Culture 25, no.1 (Summer 1991): 138.
51
the U.S. is largely owed to contact between American servicemen and Japanese
martial arts experts during the post-WW II Occupation of Japan and Okinawa.
The beginning of the Cold War helped Japanese martial arts as well as things
Asian in general comes into favor with the American public. In her book Cold War
Orientalism, Christina Klein argues that during the Cold War period of 1945 to 1961
American expansion in Asia brought a proliferation of American representations of
Asia in middle-brow popular culture.
67
According to her, what characterizes the
fascination of this time period is that noncommunist Asia is not imagined as an enemy
or object of conquest but as an ally or a subject of integration and partnership. The
ideology of Cold War Orientalism was integration, racial tolerance, and global
interdependence. Klein argues that the Cold War ideology of integration was bound up
with the domestic project of integrating African Americans and Asian Americans in
the U.S. It was necessary for the U.S. to overcome its ingrained racism in order to
propagate the U.S. as different from imperialist Europe and communist countries. The
legal reforms dealing with racial discrimination against African Americans and Asian
Americans were taken seriously to justify the expansionist mission in Asia under the
rubric of a capitalist “free world” order. As a result, Klein asserts, American Cold War
Orientalism gradually accepted Asia as part of America by looking at Americanness
not in racial terms but from multicultural perspectives.

67
Christina Klein, Cold War Orientalism: Asia in the Middlebrow Imagination, 1945–1961 (Berkeley,
University of California Press, 2003)
52
This ideology of racial tolerance and multiculturalism is reflected in the 1950s
Hollywood films that dealt with Japanese or Japanese Americans, such as Bad Day at
Black Rock (1954) and The Crimson Kimono (1959). David Desser argues that what
he calls an “encounter with Asia” is crucial to the plot of these films.
68
Set in 1945,
Bad Day at Black Rock begins when John J. Macreedy (Spencer Tracy), an amputee
veteran returning from World War II, arrives at a tiny, isolated town called Black
Rock in the Southwest. He is in search of a Japanese man named Komako to whom
Macreedy wants to give the medal of honor he received at the end of the War.
Macreedy believes that Komako’s son actually deserves the medal since his son saved
Macreedy’s life at the battle in Italy. However, it turns out Komako was killed by
white Americans in town because he was a “Jap.” In the cafe scene, Macreedy defeats
a townsman with judo moves that he probably learned from Komako’s son in the
military. The theme of film – to bring justice to white racists and apologize for
murdered or interned Japanese Americans – was quite unusual on the Hollywood
screen at that time.
Samuel Fuller’s The Crimson Kimono was quite provocative as well. Set in
Little Tokyo, Los Angeles, the film deals with an interracial love triangle. The film
ends happily with Japanese American Joe Kojaku (played by James Shigeta) winning
the white girl’s love. Given that Asian masculinity has been depicted in Hollywood
either as the threatening “yellow peril” or as a thing to emasculate, the Japanese

68
David Desser, “The Kung Fu Craze: Hong Kong Cinema’s First American Reception,” in The
Cinema of Hong Kong: History, Arts, Identity, ed. Poshek Fu and David Desser (Cambridge University
Press, 2000), 27-8.
53
American character Joe Kojaku in Crimson Kimono is quite remarkable. Joe is
portrayed as sensitive, artistic, attractive even to the white girl, as well as traditionally
masculine enough to serve in the Korean War and practice karate, judo, and kendo.
Desser points out the importance of the representation of Japanese martial arts in the
film:
To my knowledge, The Crimson Kimono boasts by far the most
detailed imagining of both karate and kendo yet seen in American
cinema. These things are presented as both exotic and deadly;
mysterious weapons of the Orient, associated at one point in the film
with geisha, thus linking the exotic with the erotic. In many ways,
Fuller’s film of 1959 looks ahead to the beginnings of the American
marital arts genre that would solidify, by my reckoning, exactly twenty
years later.
69

The film also briefly deals with Japanese Americans’ War efforts during World
War II and the Korean War. It signals how Asian Americans began to be accepted as
“equal” Americans.
Following these films, in the 1960s, Asian martial arts began to be
commercialized and regularly appeared in fight scenes in movies and television shows.
Some immigrant Asian martial arts instructors as well as American martial arts experts
knocked on the door of the entertainment industry and successfully commercialized
their skills. They worked as stuntmen or choreographers for Hollywood action movies
with Japanese themes, including Manchurian Candidate (1962), Goldfinger (1964),
The Pink Panther (U.K., 1963), Karate: The Hand of Death (1961), You Only Live

69
Ibid., 28.
54
Twice (1967), Our Man Flint (1966), The Karate Killers (1967), and The President’s
Analyst (1967).
Television was also a popular media that showcased martial arts. Many action
or spy thriller television series of the 1960s had at least one or several episodes that
introduced Japanese martial arts. These include The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet
(1952-1966), The Detectives (1959-1962), The Man from UNCLE (1964-68), I Spy
(1965-1968), The Wild Wild West (1965-1969) and Green Hornet (1966-1967).

Bruce Lee and the Kung Fu Craze
The crucial shift occurred in the early 1970s with the emergence of Bruce Lee
and the kung fu craze. It was at this point that Chinese kung fu replaced the Japanese
martial arts boom, although Bruce Lee’s kung fu was often confused with karate in the
mass media. Kung fu became a commodity in every aspect of American popular
culture, including movies, television shows, books, novels, magazines, comics, and
music. The kung fu craze blossomed in two ways. On one hand, Hong Kong kung fu
movies were imported from Hong Kong, such as Five Fingers of Death (1972), Deep
Thrust-The Hand of Death (1972), Fists of Fury (1971), The Chinese Connection
(1972), Shanghai Killers (1971), Fearless Fighters (1971), Lady Kung Fu (1972), and
Deadly China Doll (1972).
70
These films hit the American screens like “a sudden

70
David Desser, “Consuming Asia: Chinese and Japanese Popular Culture and the American
Imaginary,” Multiple Modernities: Cinemas and Popular Media in Transcultural East Asia, ed. Jenny
Kwok Wah Lau (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2003), 187.
55
storm.”
71
On the other hand, Hollywood began to co-produce kung fu film with Hong
Kong film industry. Enter the Dragon marked the first time that a major American
studio went to Hong Kong to make an international martial arts film.
It is important to note, as David Desser argues, the kung fu craze coincided
with U.S. troop withdrawals from Vietnam in 1972 and 1973.
72
The failure of the War
was bitter for many Americans. According to Desser, Hong Kong kung fu films
appealed to “those subcultural, disillusioned, disaffected audiences who had opposed
the war or who were more radically and generally alienated from much of mainstream
culture.”
73
The stories of exploited workers resisting the forces of exploitation and
colonialization in kung fu films struck a chord with racial minorities such as African
Americans, Latinos, and Asian Americans. Bruce Lee became the symbol of anti-hero,
dynamiting American ghetto theaters. African Americans even created their own
martial arts cinema, blending martial arts with their genre of blaxploitation. Jim
Kelly’s Black Belt Jones (1974) and Tamara Dobson’s Cleopatra Jones (1973)
presented a tough, street-smart black male or female karate expert, respectively.
While neither of them replaced Bruce Lee’s anti-hero stardom, there already
existed another memorable sub-cultural cult hero before Bruce Lee. The actor-director
Tom Laughlin created a character named Billy Jack as the half-Indian Vietnam War
veteran who defends a countercultural school called “Freedom School” on an Indian
Reservation. The film Billy Jack (1971) is regarded as a rare film that deals with the

71
David Desser, “The Kung Fu Craze,” 19-20.
72
Desser, “Consuming Asia,” 186.
73
Ibid., 186.
56
plight of and discrimination against Native Americans during the Civil Rights
movement era. Billy Jack is portrayed as a hopkido master and there are fighting
sequences that demonstrate the martial arts skills he learned in the army. As in the
case of Bruce Lee, Billy Jack’s martial arts seems to be the only weapon available to
repessed minorities to protect themselves from the violent white society. In fact, Billy
Jack quite resembles Bruce Lee’s character, especially in Chinese Connection. In the
film, Bruce Lee kills the enemy even though he knows that revenge will bring on his
own demise. The police arrive, surround Lee and point their guns at him. Lee jumps in
the air and the film frame freezes with gun shot sounds. Bruce Lee becomes a martyr
for the oppressed people. Likewise, Billy Jack kills the white man who harrassed
many Native Indians and raped his girlfriend. He knows the consequences of his
action but he believes that it is the only way to solve the problem. Billy Jack is
captured by the police and becomes a martyr for Indian justice. Martial arts heroes
were often heroes of racial minorities in the 1970s. Kung fu was the symbol of a
fighting spirit that rose up against racial oppression. For a more detailed discussion of
this time period, see Chapter 3 Bruce Lee.

The Emergence of a Low-Budget Martial Arts Genre
As the era of radicalism in the 1970s was replaced with a new era of
conservatism under the Reagan presidency, the 1980s witnessed a major change in
American martial arts cinema: the emergence of low-budget, martial arts B-movies
57
with white action heroes in charge. The dispersion of VCR technology and the
ensuring development of direct-to-video markets in the 1980s expedited the advent of
low-budget martial arts films in which martial arts became central to the narrative and
the major attraction of the genre.
74
The hand-to-hand combat methods of martial arts
looked practical and appropriate for the low-budget action genre. Some of the B
martial arts films were released in theaters but most of them were produced by
independent companies for direct-to-video markets.
With the exception of Sho Kosugi, who is considered “the first Asian star in
the American cinema since Bruce Lee,”
75
white actors such as Chuck Norris, Michael
Dudikoff, Steven Seagal, and Jean-Claude van Damme dominated the new genre.
Similarly, white muscular action stars such as Sylvester Stallone and Arnold
Schwarzenegger dominated major blockbuster action screens. In Hard Bodies:
Hollywood Masculinity in the Reagan Era, Susan Jeffords argues that “the blockbuster
male heroes of the late 1980s are almost exclusively white men, because mainstream
America was not prepared to perceive African-American men in the position of
controlling and defining justice.”
76
She claims that Hollywood action films reflected
the New Right conservatism of the times that attempted to restore white masculinity.
According to her, both the images of macho president Ronald Reagan and white

74
Yvonne Tasker, Spectacular Bodies: Gender, Genre and the Action Cinema (London: Routhledge,
1993), 56. Meaghan Morris, “Transnational Imagination in Action Cinema: Hong Kong and the Making
of a Global Popular Culture,” Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, 5(2) (2004): 185-6.
75
David Desser, “The Martial Arts Film in the 1990s,” in Film Genre 2000: New Critical Essays, ed.
Wheeler Winston Dixon, (Albany: N.Y.: State University of New York Press, 2000), 86.
76
Susan Jeffords, Hard Bodies: Hollywood Masculinity in the Reagan Era (New Brunswick, New
Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1994), 138.
58
“hard” bodies fulfilled the national desire and fantasy to become an aggressive,
determined, and strong nation. Other racial bodies were excluded from such heroism.
It was no different in the new, low-budget martial arts genre.
In the martial arts B-movies, the narrative structure in which white heroes
master Asian martial arts is noteworthy. David Desser argues that the legacy of the
Vietnam War runs in these films.
77
Many martial arts films take Vietnam as their
narrative starting point: for example, Chuck Norris’ Good Guys Wear Black (1979),
Steven Seagal’s Above the Law (1988), and Jean-Claude van Damme’s Bloodsport
(1988). The protagonists in these films are Vietnam War veterans who learned Asian
martial arts from Asian masters. Given that American Wars in Asia exposed American
soldiers to Asian martial arts, such a narrative makes sense. Yet it is problematic, as
Desser points out, that American protagonists use Asian martial arts to defeat Asian
villains. Desser argues that the formula of the Western hero mastering Asian martial
arts while Asians appear as villains may be seen as a legacy of the Vietnam War: the
fantasy of mastering Asia and Asian culture. As Desser observes, it is interesting that
in many films Asian martial arts masters appear aging, weakened, and usually sexless.
He succinctly puts it, “It is as if Asia is no longer able to defend itself and must pass
on its legacy to the West, which is better able to use Asia’s skills and knowledge.”
78
In
short, white conservatism is reflected in the narrative structure of the new genre in
which white heroes use Asian martial arts to satisfy white fantasies.

77
Desser in Film Genre 2000
78
Desser, “The Martial Arts Film in the 1990s,” 106.
59
Chuck Norris’ career and film persona represent the impact of conservatism on
the martial arts genre, as well as the diffusion of Asian martial arts in the U.S. Chuck
Norris first learned Asian martial arts when he was on a military base in Asia. He
voluntarily enlisted in the United States Air Force in 1958 at the age of nineteen and
soon transferred to Osan U.S. military base in Korea. Although the Korean War was
over by then, tensions still ran high under Cold War politics. As he wrote in his
autobiography Against All Odds: My Story, “At Osan Air Base soldiers could do three
things with their spare time: (1) booze it up, (2) enroll in an academic class, or (3)
study martial arts.”
79
Norris chose to study martial arts – judo, karate, Tang Soo Do
and Taekwondo. This became the major turning point in his life. After he came back
to the U.S., he opened a karate school and began to enter martial arts tournaments, in
which he won several championships. At one of the tournaments, Norris met Bruce
Lee and earned a chance to play Bruce Lee’s nemesis in Return of the Dragon. This
moviemaking experience encouraged Norris to act and commercialize his martial arts
skills for filmmaking. If his role was opposite to Bruce Lee in Return of the Dragon,
his politics were opposite to what Lee embodied through his film persona. M.Ray Lott
notes, as Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger bared their muscles, Chuck
Norris began muscling up and became a veritable “one-man army,” fighting drug
dealers, terrorists, and Communists, sometimes all in the same film.
80
Particularly
Norris’ 1980s films, such as Missing in Action (1984) under Cannon Films, repeated

79
Chuck Norris, Against All Odds: My Story (B&H Publishing Group, 2004), 32.
80
M.Ray Lott, The American Martial Arts Film (McFarland & Company, 2004), 73.
60
the anti-Communist rhetoric and POW rescue fantasies. Norris later dedicated this
film to his younger brother, who died in Vietnam. After several successful years as a B
action film star, Norris moved to mainstream television as Cordell Walker in Walker,
Texas Ranger. The show began to air in 1993 and lasted eight years on CBS, “making
it the first martial arts primetime television series since Kung Fu.”
81
In real life, Norris
has openly been a Republican, and his friendships with Ronald Reagon, George Bush,
George W.Bush, and Arnold Schwarzenegger have been publicized in his biography.
With George Bush’s help, Norris developed the martial arts program in pulic schools
named “Kick Drugs Out of America (KICKSTART).” His career exemplifies how the
diffusion of Asian martial arts in American culture is intertwined with American
military expansion in Asia and how it became co-opted by mainstream America.
Though ideologically problematic due to racial politics, the B martial arts
genre should not simply be dismissed. In his article “Class in Action,” Chuck
Kleinhans notes the genre particularly addresses American working class audiences.
82

He claims that unlike the common belief that the B action/martial arts genre is
ideologically reactionary and aesthetically poor, it has considerable complexity and
variation, and offers multiple complicated pleasures to spectators. In particular, these
films, as exemplified in Steven Seagal’s Above the Law (1988), offer the fantasy of
displacement of class oppression: the storyline that a hero witnesses misdoing of the
law, makes a moral decision to go against the rules, and does the right thing without

81
Desser, “The Martial Arts Film in the 1990s,” 84.
82
Chuck Kleinhans, “Class in Action” in The Hidden Foundation: Cinema and the Questions of Class,
ed. David E. James and Rick Berg (University of Minnesota Press, 1996).
61
having to calculate economic hardship (being fired or punished by the law) has great
appeal to working class audiences who cannot do so in real life. Kleinhans argues that
therefore more sophisticated class analysis is necessary in understanding American B
martial arts cinema.

Martial Arts for Family Entertainment
The 1980s observed another significant change – the adaptation of martial arts
in children’s media. The beginning was The Karate Kid (1984), a massive commercial
hit that was followed by three sequels. The film became the prototype of martial arts
cinema for children. It deals with how a young kid can mature through martial arts
training. As the advertisement headlines emphasized, “He taught him the secret to
karate lies in the mind and heart. Not in the hands,” the spiritual value of martial arts
was emphasized in the film. The New York Times puts it, “A large part of The Karate
Kid – the best part, really – seems to be taking place inside a fortune cookie. It is here,
in the serene realm of Oriental Wisdom, Hollywood-style, that a teen-ager named
Daniel (Ralph Macchio) is taught lesson after lesson about life.”
83
Asian sifu Mr.
Miyagi teaches Daniel that karate is for personal growth and discipline, not for
violence. “Wax on, wax off,” symbolized the essence of such teaching and became a
popular phrase among the public. The Karate Kid is known to renew youth interest in
martial arts.

83
Janet Maslin, “Screen: ‘Karate Kid,’ He’s the Bane of Bullies,” The New York Times, June 22, 1984.
62
The release of another family movie Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (TMNT), in
1990 signaled many shifts in the American martial arts genre in the following years. It
indicated the beginning of martial arts as a source of total entertainment. As Marsha
Kinder notes, TMNT established a “supersystem” accompanied by the television
animated series, home video games, action figures, and merchandise.
84
Since then,
many martial arts films and television series have attempted to develop a total
entertainment system that combines various media forms to create synergy effects.
Originally based on a comic book published by Mirage Studios in 1984, TMNT was
the first example of Hollywood borrowing sources from other entertainment media for
martial arts filmmaking. The famous Marvel Comics group published many comic
books featuring action superheroes and heroines with martial arts skills – to name a
few, Daredevil, Dr. Strange, and The X-Men. Daredevil and The X-Men were
recreated for motion pictures in the 2000s. Furthermore, TMNT pioneered the market
of martial arts-themed TV animation series. Its success among kids encouraged the
making of similar shows, such as Jackie Chan Adventures (2000-2005), Samurai Jack,
(2001-2004), Xiaolin Showdown (2003-2006), and Avatar: The Last Airbender (2005-
2008). This demonstrates how Asian martial arts have infiltrated every aspects of
American popular culture.

84
Marsha Kinder, Playing with Power in Movies, Television and Video Games; From Muppet Babies to
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), 121-153.
63
Hong Kong Presence in Contemporary Hollywood
After the 1970s kung fu craze, Hollywood mainly imported Hong Kong films.
It is a notable new phenomenon that in the contemporary kung fu craze, it imports
Hong Kong talent rather than the film products themselves. Hollywood’s new
dominance in martial arts filmmaking owes much to Chinese talent from Hong Kong
or mainland China – to name a few, Jackie Chan, Jet Li, Chow Yun-fat, Michelle
Yeoh, Zhang ziyi, Gong Li, Cory Yuen, Yuen Woo-ping, and Yuen Cheung-Yan.
They have been involved in Hollywood marial arts cinema as protagonists or action
choreographers. Their ability to perform martial arts or Hong Kong style action has
helped them to cross over to Hollywood. Such Asian presence in Hollywood or the
loss of Hong Kong’s monopoly in martial arts filmmaking, represents the possibilities
and limits of global Hong Kong cinema as well as global Hollywood’s role in the
contemporary film industry. Ranging from optimistic to pessimistic tones, scholars
have suggested different perspectives about this phenomenon.
Some scholars suggest that the Hong Kong presences in Hollywood can be
understood in terms of an American cultural imperialism that incorporates local talents
to fortify its domination. Historically, globalization has been understood as
Americanization, part of a longstanding discourse regarding American imperialism
and Western colonialism. In this context, Hollywood has been considered an
omnipresent cultural-imperialist power that homogenizes local cultures. While terms
such as imperialism and colonialism are no longer popularly used in film criticism
64
these days, many scholars basically rely on this model. In particular, local Hong Kong
scholars roughly stand in this position.
One notable case is Kwai-Cheung Lo, who argues that the success of Hong
Kong filmmakers and actors in Hollywood does not necessarily mean the success of
Hong Kong cinema. Rather, he claims that the drain of Hong Kong talent into
Hollywood has caused the decline of the Hong Kong entertainment industry, which
was “once a significant exporter of films in the world.”
85
It is not difficult to understand that these Hong Kong film talents are
not exported to the global film market as products made in Hong Kong,
although it was their work in Hong Kong that first attracted
Hollywood’s gaze. They are more like expatriates or migrant workers
starting a new life in a new host country. Their past reputations in Hong
Kong or Asia, upon which their cultural identity was built, become
relatively negligible since they are now workers looking for a new
career in a different market.
86
It is true that Hong Kong talents’ crossover to Hollywood coincided with or
was followed by the vanishing Hong Kong film empire. It is also true that their fame
in Hong Kong and Asia does not guarantee them secure positions. Rather, as Kwai-
Cheung Lo argues, they have to struggle with a Hollywood system that gives them
limited characters that heavily rely on American presuppositions of “what Asians or
Chinese should be like,” as opposed to the specific symbolic values or Hong Kong
identities attached to them.
87

85
Kwai-Cheung Lo, Chinese Face/Off: The Transnational Popular Culture of Hong Kong (Hong Kong:
Hong Kong University Press, 2005), 128.
86
Ibid.,132.
87
Ibid., 135.
65
Another Hong Kong scholar, Wai Kit Choi, presents a similar perspective. He
understands Hong Kong presence in Hollywood in terms of Hollywood’s management
of a cultural “Other.”
88
The problem is that Hollywood’s incorporation of a cultural
“Other” can be seen as multiculturalism succeeding in Hollywood. Choi claims,
however, that it is a co-opted multiculturalism, and that Hollywood makes use of
Hong Kong film professionals for economic reasons – expanding target audiences –
not for genuinely multicultural purpose.
With its removal of graphic violence, and an emphasis on ballet-like
choreography, Hong Kong-style action films can be rated as PG-13
rather than R, hence enabling Hollywood to market these movies to the
all-important core teenage moviegoer. At the other end, segments of the
older audience turned off by hard-edged action have also become
converts to this new style. The importation of Hong Kong action stars
and choreographers then plays a central role in revitalizing the
traditional Hollywood action genre, and these action films can now
reach a wider audience than before.
89

Chinese American scholar James Kim offers an insight into understanding the
Chinese presence in Hollywood in terms of American racial politics. In “The Legend
of the White-and-Yellow Black Man: Global Containment and Triangulated Racial
Desire in Romeo Must Die,” James Kim discusses Jet Li’s association with black
culture in his Hollywood films.
90
He argues that the intersection of urban black
culture and Asian kung fu in Romeo Must Die originates in the need to capitalize on

88
Wai Kit Choi, “Post-Fordist Production and the Re-appropriation of Hong Kong Masculinities in
Hollywood,” in Masculinities and Hong Kong Cinema, ed. Laikwan Pang and Day Wong (Hong Kong:
Hong Kong University Press, 2005), 203.
203.
89
Ibid., 218.
90
James Kim, “The Legend of the White-and-Yellow Black Man: Global Containment and
Triangulated Racial Desire in Romeo Must Die,” Camera Obscura, 55 (May 2004): 151-81.
66
two global trends: the hip-hop commodification of Asianness and the diaspora of
Hong Kong’s cinematic talent.
91
In other words, the crossover of Hong Kong talent is
contemporaneous with the growing attraction of hip, black, urban consumers to all
thing East Asian. However, Kim argues that unlike the interracial solidarity available
in the post-Vietnam era of the early 1970s via the kung fu star Bruce Lee, “an icon of
inner-city fury and self-empowerment,”
92
the contemporary kung fu fad for 1970s
retro has nothing to do with political messages. Rather, Jet Li’s Romeo Must Die
contains the possibility of interracial solidarity and fulfills white man’s fantasy
through what Kim calls “triangulated racial desire (white-black-and-yellow).”
93

In this system of triangulation, Han emphatically does not become the
potent yellow man seemingly necessitated by the movie’s
commonsense representational mission. Rather, he becomes a white-
and-yellow black man: a yellow male figure constructed both to
facilitate white male fantasies about black masculinity and to expiate
white male anxieties about black male potency. Yellowness becomes a
metaphor for whiteness ambivalently wishing to become blackness.
94

Kim concludes that Romeo Must Die may seem to challenge prevalent
representations of Asian American masculinity by casting an Asian actor as both a
romantic lead and an action hero but it does not assert a potent yellow masculinity;
instead it neuters yellow masculinity to locate it as the third term in a black-white-and
yellow homosocial triangle that facilitates white racial fantasies about black
masculinity. James Kim’s article exmplifies how crossover Chinese talents are being

91
Ibid., 169.
92
Ibid., 171.
93
Ibid., 163.
94
Ibid., 165-6.
67
consumed within the framework of U.S. racial politics. He claims the film is an
example of Hollywood strategy for managing U.S. race relations in an age of
increasing yellow visibility.
95

While these Hong Kong/Chinese American scholars criticize Hollywood films
based on textual analyses, some American scholars suggest looking at the material
aspect of global Hollywood. The book Global Hollywood by Toby Miller, Nitin Govil,
John McMurria, and Richard Maxwell highlights the material factors behind global
Hollywood and offers insightful understanding of Hong Kong talents working in
Hollywood.
96
The book suggests that Hollywood’s global dominance is not due to
superior production, universal storytelling, the multi-ethnic nature of its industry or
free market demands, as commonly believed. Rather, the authors claim that
Hollywood’s dominance is based on suppression of worker rights and its regulation
and exploitation of globalized labor: what they call “a New International Division of
Cultural Labor (NICL).” Hollywood has historically succeeded in minimizing cost and
maximizing revenue by importing cultural producers from other national film
industries and utilizing cheap and skilled labor forces overseas through runaway
production. Global Hollywood analyses how the NICL operates through many specific
practices – a global system of co-production and marketing, intellectual property and
copyright laws, and finally surveillance of audiences.

95
Ibid., 153.
96
Toby Miller, Nitin Govil, John McMurria, and Richard Maxwell, Global Hollywood (BFI, 2001).
68
The Asian talents working in Hollywood can be understood by the notion of
NICL. Using the established skilled Hong Kong experts is a cheaper and more
efficient way to run a global movie business than training new talents within the
Hollywood system. Given the cultural resistance among American audiences, it is also
better for Hollywood to make American versions of martial arts films using foreign
talents rather than importing foreign martial arts films.
On the other hand, Hong Kong talent in Hollywood can be seen as the
successful intervention or resistance of local culture into Hollywood’s hegemony. The
old paradigm of “Western center – local peripheries” has been questioned by new
paradigms that suggest new notions such as “many globalizations,”
97
“alternative
globalizations,” and “multiple modernities.”
98
These terms implicate the complexity of
today’s globalization. They argue that media globalization does not simply promote
Western domination and homogenization of culture; rather, it also facilitates the de-
centering of Western capitalism and the heterogenization of cultures.
In Flexible Citizenship: The Cultural Logics of Transnationality, Aihwa Ong
point out that Asian nation-states and their citizens have developed their own flexible
and complex relationships with global capitalism in order to accumulate capital and
power.
99
The rich diaspora Chinese from the Asian Pacific Rim (including Hong Kong,

97
From Peter L. Berger and Samuel P. Huntington’s Many Globalizations: Cultural Diversity in the
Contemporary World (Oxford University Press, 2002).
98
From Jenny Kwok Wah Lau’s Multiple Modernities: Cinemas and Popular Media in Transcultural
East Asia, ed. (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2003).
99
Aihwa Ong, Flexible Citizenship: The Cultural Logics of Transnationality (Durham, Duke University
Press, 1999).
69
Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, and Indonesia) have emerged as a new class
of cosmopolitans who can afford “flexible citizenship” and travel with multiple
passports. These business elites, who are mostly mobile managers, technocrats, and
professionals, are constantly in the air, like “astronauts,” to accumulate more capital
while their families are located in rich English-speaking countries such as the U.S.,
Canada, or Australia. Ong notes that globalization has made it possible for this new
class of Chinese homo economicus to choose citizenship based on their economic
calculations. They are individual agencies of transnationalism.
The notion of flexible citizenship is relevant in explaining Chinese actors and
filmmakers who are working in Hollywood. It highlights their agency as humans and
as transnationals. In many cases, Hong Kong film professionals voluntarily migrated
to Hollywood. Their talents in martial arts filmmaking are their “capitals” and “assets”
that privilege them to travel freely and work in a foreign country. They do so to
accumulate more capital and power – it can be money, fame, success, name
recognition, etc. Among others, Jackie Chan is a good example of a transnational
“flexible citizen.” He constantly travels the globe, making films in Asia, America,
Europe, and elsewhere. He may have played stereotypical roles in Hollywood, but it is
his own choice and no one forces him to do so. Furthermore, even after his successful
intervention to Hollywood, he still makes movies in Hong Kong to please his loyal
Asian fans. He exemplifies the new class of cosmopolitan Aihwa Ong suggests.
70
Likewise, Christina Klein emphasizes the agency of Asian film industries. She
notes that contemporary Asian film industries have begun to borrow elements of
Hollywood’s visual and narrative style.
100
This Hollywoodization of Asian film
industries, however, is a voluntary effort to win back local audiences and increase
their films’ export potential. In other words, it proves Asian filmmakers’ ability to
appropriate and indigenize Hollywood conventions and to make Hollywood-quality
movies. Within this trend, global Hollywood is not opposed to local industries. Rather,
“Asian film industries are not so much resisting globalization as learning how to turn
some of the transformations it has unleashed to their own advantage.”
101
Klein situates
the Hong Kong presence in Hollywood as representing the integration of Hollywood
and Asian local industries rather than Hollywood dominance over Asian industries.
I would argue that the contemporary Hollywood dominance in martial arts
filmmaking signifies that global Hong Kong cinema has entered a new stage of
globalization. The golden age of Hong Kong cinema is over, as local Hong Kong films
no longer widely circulate in global markets. However, this does not necessarily mean
that Hong Kong transnationalism has ended; rather, it has entered into a new stage in
which many Hong Kong talents attain global visibility through global Hollywood
films. Hong Kong talents may not have much control over their roles and images. It is
true that they have to “kung fu fight” to be admitted and go mainstream. However, that
does not necessarily imply that they are only victims of stereotypes and the stock

100
Christian Klein, “Martial Arts and the Globalization of US and Asian Film Industries,” Comparative
American Studies. 2 (3) (2004): 360-384.
101
Ibid., 371.
71
characters. They use martial arts for the benefit of their individual careers and success.
While it is important to examine the ideological implication behind the institutional
practices of Hollywood that limits Asian people to playing kung fu fighters, the
agency exhibited when Asian talents seize their narrow invitation to the Hollywood
screens cannot be ignored. Martial arts ability is an asset that helps them reach wider
global audiences through Hollywood global networks. For example, Jackie Chan still
makes films in Hong Kong, but his Hong Kong films such as New Police Story (2004)
and Myth (2005) hardly circulated globally, particularly in Northern American markets.
However, his Hollywood products such as the Rush Hour series have been global hits,
making him more popular and visible. The fact that Hong Kong/Chinese martial arts
talents achieve global visibility through Hollywood products implies their limitations
as well as their possibilities. This is a new phase of transnational Hong Kong cinema.

Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon
At this point I will discuss Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon (2000), since the
film is an interesting case of transnational martial arts filmmaking that does not fit into
the Hong Kong vs. Hollywood paradigm, and its director Ang Lee can be understood
in the context of cross-over Hong Kong talent.
As Christina Klein puts it, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon “displays the
simultaneously localizing and globalizing tendencies of mass culture today.”
102
The

102
Christina Klein, “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon: A Diasporic Reading,” in Cinema Journal. 43(4)
(summer 2004): 18.
72
film is backed by international funding, and boasts pan-Asian cast and crew, which
makes it difficult to determine the nationality of the film. It can be a film of Taiwan,
Hong Kong, the U.S., and/or China. The film is based on a story by the mainland
Chinese writer Wang Dulu, and shot in China. But it is directed by American-based
Taiwanese director Ang Lee, and the cast hails from Hong Kong (Chow Yun-fat and
Cheng Pei Pei), China (Zhang Ziyi), Taiwan (Zhang Zhen), and the Chinese diaspora
(the Malaysian Chinese Michelle Yeoh). The spoken language is Mandarin, yet the
script was co-written and translated back and forth between English and Chinese by
Ang Lee’s longtime creative partner, American James Schamus, and Taiwanese writer
Wang Hui Ling. The funding sources are complexly global as well. As Christina Klein
summarizes:
Much of the money came from various divisions of Sony, the Tokyo-
based media conglomerate: production funds were provided by
Columbia Pictures Film Production Asia…Schamus’s own Good
Machine International contributed its portion of financing by selling
rights to a bevy of European distributors. The actual cash for the film
came from a bank in Paris, while a completion bond company in Los
Angeles insured the production.
103
Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon exemplifies the possibility of a third kind of
martial arts filmmaking that does not limit its artistic vision or funding sources within
certain national or industrial boundaries. Called “a postmodern, globalized form of the

103
Ibid., 19.
73
wuxia pian,”
104
the film represents the blurring boundaries between national and
transnational cinema today.
This kind of explorative filmmaking was made possible by Ang Lee’s hybrid,
flexible identity. Ang Lee was born in Taiwan, but his father had been exiled from
mainland China to Taiwan during the Revolution.
105
Having inherited a sentiment of
being shorn of a homeland, Ang Lee has dreamt of China as his imaginary home.
Sparkling his imagination were Hong Kong martial arts films: the nostalgic filmic
genre for the Chinese diaspora. However, he was influenced by American culture as
much as by Hong Kong films. Lee came to the U.S., where he earned his bachelor’s
degree in theater from the University of Illinois and a master’s degree from the film
school at New York University. His twenty years in the U.S. has shaped the
construction of his identity as well as his cinematic world.
106
In many interviews, Lee
has acknowledged his multiple identities.
I’m a mixture of many things and a confusion of many things. I’m not a
native Taiwanese, so we’re alien in a way in Taiwan today, with the
native Taiwanese pushing for independence. But when we go back to
China, we’re Taiwanese. Then, I live in the States; I’m a sort of
foreigner everywhere. It’s hard to find real identity.
107

Lee has actively taken advantage of his hybrid and flexible identity as
Taiwanese, Chinese, Asian American, or Chinese American throughout his film career.

104
Kenneth Chan, “The Global Return of the Wu Xia Pian (Chinese Sword-Fighting Movie): Ang Lee’s
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon,” in Cinema Journal. 43(4) (summer 2004): 5.
105
Ang Lee in an interview with Oren Moverman in Interview (September 1997), 64-68.
106
“Honestly, I can’t tell any more which part of me is American and which is Oriental. I’ve lived here
[U.S.] a long time, and my upbringing in Taiwan had a lot of American influences.” – Ang Lee in an
interview with Oren Moverman in Interview (September 1997): 65.
107
Ang Lee in an interview with Chris Berry in Cinemaya, no. 21 (autumn 1993): 52-54.
74
Lee started as a Taiwanese director who dealt with the “schism between Asian cultural
values and encroaching Westernization.”
108
His so-called “Father Knows Best” trilogy
– Pushing Hands (1992), The Wedding Banquet (1993), and Eat, Drink, Man, Woman
(1994) – tackles the issues of Taiwanese modern society. However, Lee has
successfully broadened his career, becoming a global director jumping from Chinese
to Western or American subject matters and genres, as his filmography plainly shows:
Sense and Sensibility (1995), The Ice Storm (1997), Ride with the Devil (1999), Hulk
(2003), and Brokeback Mountain (2005). His winning of the Best Director Academy
Award for Brokeback Mountain in 2006 proves how his flexible identity is
acknowledged partly as American. Indeed, Ang Lee deserves the title of a “cultural
navigator”
109
who crosses the boundaries of nation, race, and culture.
However, his transnational status as a global director has not helped him break
free from the paradigm of Chinese nationalism. Rather, his transnationality has made
him more vulnerable to critique based on cultural essentialism and traditionalism.
Among his many films, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon is Lee’s most internationally
successful, yet it is the most criticized by Chinese communities. While the film is a
martial arts genre film that is deeply embedded in Chinese tradition and whose
“fantasy is fundamentally nationalist,”
110
Lee’s fictional China has nothing to do with
a nationalist notion of China. Rather, Lee generates China as a modern and civilized

108
Richard Natale, Variety, August 30, 1999
109
Ibid.
110
Tony Rayns with a contribution from Roger Garcia, “The Sword as Obstacle,” in The 5
th
Hong Kong
International Film Festival: A Study of the Hong Kong Swordplay Film (1945-1980) (Hong Kong: The
Urban Council, April 9-24, 1981), 155.
75
space and presents a hybrid Chinese-ness that can be blended with modern global
sense and sensibilities. However, its “in-between-ness,” a hybrid identification
between Chinese and global senses that mirrors Ang Lee’s multiple and shifting
identity, was not welcomed by everybody.
The debates surrounding the film’s differing reception in the East and West
indicate that cultural authenticity still matters in the age of globalization. Its
unexpected success in the West in contrast to failures in mainland China and Hong
Kong generated disputes about the authenticity of the martial arts in the film and
cultural ownership at large. Called a “Mandarin Blockbuster,”
111
or “a pan-Chinese
blockbuster,” the film was a big hit, particularly in the Western countries. In the U.S.,
the film was initially released in art houses but it “jumped” and “kicked” into the
mainstream multiplexes. It grossed more than $100 million at North American box
offices, despite the “handicap” of being a subtitled film, and earned over $170 million
worldwide. However, “ironically, the film has drawn a collective critical shrug in
China.”
112
American critic Derek Elley blatantly put it, “At the Asian box office, it’s a
toothless tiger. The film hit a great wall in China, had no soul in Seoul, and was
gonged in Hong Kong.”
113

Some newspapers attributed the polarized reception to different local tastes.
They discussed that while the film’s slow-paced unrealistic action was acclaimed as
“poetic and spiritual” by American critics and audiences it was received as too slow

111
Venessa Thorpe, “A Tiger Burning Bright,” Guardian, January 14, 2001.
112
Ibid.
113
“Asia to Tiger: Kung-Fooey,” Variety, February 5, 2001.
76
and “lame” by Hong Kong/Chinese critics and audiences. The New York Times wrote,
“Weaned on the gun battles and hyperkinetic action of Jackie Chan movies, people did
not have the patience for Mr. Lee’s moody, contemplative look at the trials of heroic
warriors in legendary China.”
114
In an interview with The Guardian, one post-
production film executive in Hong Kong said: “For Hong Kong Chinese there’s
simply not enough action. I grew up with this type of film. You can see them every
day on TV. It’s nothing new, even the female angle. But Crouching Tiger is so slow,
it’s a bit like listening to grandmother telling stories.”
115

The debates deepened as some people accused the film for portraying Chinese
martial arts in “Western style” to pander to Western audiences.
116
Kenneth Chan
summarizes the essences of such criticisms and how they put Ang Lee in a difficult
position.
On the one hand, cultural essentialists and purists accused him of
making a wuxia pian that diluted the genre’s tradition and that
propagated an inaccurate representation of China and Chinese culture.
On the other hand, anti-Orientalists suggested that Lee was pandering
to a western desire for Oriental exotica and kung fu stereotypes of
Asians.
117
According to Kenneth Chan, such nationalist, even chauvinistic reactions reveal
“a cultural anxiety about identity and Chineseness in a globalized, postcolonial, and

114
Mark Landler, ‘“Crouching Tiger,’ Celebrated Everywhere but in China,” The New York Times,
February 27, 2001.
115
Steve Rose, “Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon has blazed a trail at western box office. So why has it
flopped in the east? Steve Ross finds out,” Guardian, February 13, 2001.
116
For example, Derek Elley claims, “It is shot in an immobile, very Western style. It is not for ‘real’
Chinese. The filmmaker tweaked the culture to woo Western audiences.” Variety, February 5, 2001.
117
Kenneth Chan, in Cinema Journal, 5.
77
postmodern world order,”
118
especially “in the context of the Hong Kong movie
industry’s post-1997 attempts to cross over into Hollywood.”
119
Lee’s case is
emblematic of cross-over Hong Kong professionals: Chinese communities will
constantly question whether or not their roles, identities, and performances are
ethnically correct and authentic to Chinese-ness, especially when they portray Chinese
cultures in Hollywood.
The Hollywood appropriation of Asian martial arts and the Hong Kong presence
in Hollywood prove that martial arts are becoming a global commodity and popular
entertainment. However, the debates around Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon
illustrate how the notions of nation, national culture, and cultural authenticity can still
be valid in an era of globalization. Indeed, martial arts provide an interesting forum for
discussing the tension between local and global cinema and culture of today.

118
Ibid., 4.
119
Ibid., 4.
78
Part 2: Hong Kong Stars in Hollywood
Chapter 3: Bruce Lee’s Legacy in Hong Kong Cinema and 1970s America
Two statues of Bruce Lee both erected in 2005 in celebrating his sixty-fifth
birthday can exemplify his lifetime achievements and legacy. One bronze statue stands
at Hong Kong’s Avenue of Stars, which oversees Hong Kong harbor. It was erected
on November 23, 2005 to honor Lee as “Chinese film’s bright star of the century.”
120

Though Hong Kong cinema had a rich history of martial arts filmmaking before Bruce
Lee there is no question that it was he who popularized the kung fu genre beyond
Chinese borders and made it the signature of Hong Kong cinema. Even today kung fu
is almost synonymous with Bruce Lee, particularly in the Western worlds. Even
contemporary kung fu stars such as Jackie Chan and Jet Li remain somewhat under his
shadow. Without doubt, Lee is one of the most successful international celebrities in
Hong Kong history.
The other statue stands in an odd place – in the war-torn Bosnian city of
Mostar. The BBC News reports that the city suffered from fierce fighting between
rival ethnic factions in the 1992-95 war and it remains split among Bosnian Muslims,
Croats, and Serbs. The statue of Bruce Lee was erected by the city as a symbol of the
fight against ethnic divisions. Veselin Gatalo, president of the organization Urban
Movement Mostar, is quoted as saying, “We will always be Muslims, Serbs or Croats,

120
At the Hong Kong Film Awards ceremony in 2005, Bruce Lee was named “Chinese Film’s Bright
Star of the Century” in a tribute to 100 years of Chinese filmmaking. Lee’s daughter Shannon Lee
Keasler accepted the award.
79
but one thing we all have in common is Bruce Lee.”
121
This monument in Bosnia
signifies the important socio-political aspects of Bruce Lee’s legacy. Bruce Lee
entered the world when anti-colonialism and anti-racism movements dominated the
international societies. Bruce Lee’s star persona as a working class racial minority
hero resonated with the oppressed people around the world who were undergoing
political turmoil such as the Vietnam War (1959-1975). According to Gary Y.Okihiro,
the Vietnam War represents a global pattern of anti-colonial struggles that occurred in
Africa and Asia before, during, and after World War II.
122
This convergence of events
produced an unusual worldwide Bruce Lee fandom and transnational kung fu craze.
Bruce Lee impacted the people and the ethos of the times as a symbol of social justice
and power fighting against colonialism and racism. As Vijay Prashad puts it, Bruce
Lee’s kung fu gave “oppressed young people an immense sense of personal worth and
the skills for collective struggle.”
123

In this chapter, I explore these two Bruce Lee legacies: first, as the Hong Kong
statue represents, I will discuss Bruce Lee as the first Chinese world star. I will
examine how he contributed to globalizing the Hong Kong film industry and helped
the kung fu genre evolve as an internationally commercial cinema. Second, I will
examine how Lee has come to symbolize a fighting spirit to the oppressed people of

121
“Bosnia Unveils Bruce Lee Bronze” BBC News, Nov 26, 2005.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/4474316.stm
122
Gary Y.Okihiro, The Columbia Guide to Asian American History (New York: Columbia University
Press, 2001), 27.
123
Vijay Prashad, Everybody was Kung Fu Fighting: Afro-Asian Connections and the Myth of Cultural
Purity (Boston: Beach Press, 2001), 132.
80
the world. In particular, I will look at early 1970s America, which is exemplary in
explaining Lee’s influence on oppressed people. Lee himself was a racial minority in
the U.S. as an American-born-Chinese who grew up in colonial Hong Kong but spent
his formative years in the U.S. His dream was “I, Bruce Lee, will be the highest paid
Oriental superstar in the United States. In return I will give the most exciting
performances and render the best quality in the capacity of an actor.”
124
His dream
came true. His powerful screen image as an underdog hero embodied his lifetime
struggle as an Oriental in the U.S. and created a transnational kung fu craze.

Across the Pacific: The Biography
Bruce Lee became the first international super star in Hong Kong film history.
This was possible because of his duel identity as Chinese as well as American. Lee
was born in 1940 in San Francisco as the son of a famous Chinese Cantonese opera
actor who was touring at vaudeville theaters in the U.S. However, his family moved
back to Hong Kong when Lee was only three months old and he grew up and lived in
Hong Kong until he became eighteen. Throughout his childhood, Hong Kong went
through a series of political upheavals – the Japanese Occupation (1941-1945), the
Communist takeover of mainland China (1949), and the ensuring influx of mainland
refugees to Hong Kong. Streets were flooded with refugees and the city suffered from
crimes and poverty. Like other young boys, Bruce Lee constantly got involved in

124
Linda Lee, The Bruce Lee Story (Santa Clarita: Ohara Publications, Inc., 1989), 96.
81
street fights. His parents finally decided to send Lee back to the U.S. to opt for
American citizenship since they could not foresee any future for him in the socially
unstable Hong Kong society. However, his childhood in colonial Hong Kong played a
crucial role in constructing his identity as Chinese and learning Chinese traditions
such as martial arts. Without learning kung fu in his youth, Lee’s future as a global
martial arts star could not have existed. His life traveling back and forth between the
U.S. and Hong Kong led him to speak two languages fluently, Cantonese and English
(albeit with an accent), which helped him launch his career in both film industries.
Bruce Lee often joked that he was cast for The Green Hornet because he was the only
Chinese man in California who could pronounce “Britt Reid,” the name of the main
character in the show.
125
After graduating from the University of Washington in Seattle, Lee settled
down in Oakland, California and opened a martial arts school. The great turning point
in Lee’s life arrived when Lee gave an exhibition of his martial arts skills at the Long
Beach karate tournament in 1964. American karate expert Ed Parker invited Lee to
demonstrate his skills, which Parker filmed. Later, the tape was shown to William
Dozier, the TV producer who had produced many popular series, including Batman
(1966-1968). At that time, Dozier was looking for an actor who could play Charlie
Chan’s Number One son for his new TV series. The show never materialized but
Dozier instead cast Lee as Kato, the Asian sidekick, for the new television series The

125
Richard K.Shull, “Holy Hero, Batman! Don’t Let the Gung-Fu Get You,” Unknown newspaper,
1966, Reprinted in Bruce Lee: Words of the Dragon Interviews, 1958-1973. ed. John Little (Boston:
Tuttle Publishing, 1997), 57.
82
Green Hornet (1966-1967). The Green Hornet was originally a popular radio show in
the 1930s that featured the story of a newspaper publisher, Britt Reid, who turns into a
masked crime fighter by the name of the Green Hornet by night. Kato was a Japanese
servant in the original radio show, but after Pearl Harbor he was changed into a
Philippino. However, the new television series did not specify Kato’s nationality – he
was ambiguously Oriental. Lee did not want to play a stereotypically submissive
Oriental chauffer. He hoped to be portrayed as an equal in order to assert the dignity of
the Chinese. During promotional tours throughout major U.S. cities, Lee openly spoke
about his wish: “I’m going to be more of a companion and partner of the Green
Hornet.”
126
He also expressed his aspiration to Dozier, the executive producer of the
series. In his letter to Dozier, Lee wrote:
Dear Mr.Dozier,

Actually, what I like to express here is regarding the relationship
between the Green Hornet and Kato. True that Kato is a house boy of
Britt but as the crime fighter, Kato is an “active partner” of the Green
Hornet and not a “mute follower.” Jeff Corey agrees and I myself feel
that at least an occasional dialogue would certainly make me “feel”
more at home with the fellow players... I’m not complaining, but I feel
that an “active partnership” with the Green Hornet will definitely bring
out a more effective and efficient Kato. My aim is for the betterment of
the show and I bother you with this because you have been most
understanding.
127

In public, Dozier talked about Lee’s potential, saying, “His ability as a natural
athlete provides a good foundation for the role of Kato, who often steps in to save the

126
Leroy F. Aarons, “Batman’s Boy Has Black Belt Rival,” The Washington Post, August 30, 1966,
Reprinted in John Little, 60.
127
John Little, 76.
83
Green Hornet when they are battling criminals. Bruce has one of the finest natural
acting talents that I have seen in my years in the industry.”
128
However, Bruce Lee did
not earn many lines in the end and unfortunately, the series ran only one season, for
six months. Only 26 episodes aired weekly on Friday from 7:30-8:00 PM on the ABC
television network from 1966 to 1967. The Green Hornet was considered “an ultimate
failure” even by Lee himself.
129
However, the show gave a chance for Lee to show a
glimpse of his kung fu skills to the American public and it brought him a sudden fame.
After The Green Hornet, Lee continued to work in Hollywood as a fight scene
choreographer for films such as The Wrecking Crew (1968) and A Walk in the Spring
Rain (1969). He also appeared in a supporting role in the film Marlowe (1969) and in
the TV series Longstreet (1971). Lee could make easy money by using his newly
earned Hollywood fame and connections to bolster his martial arts school business.
However, he closed his schools and focused on finding a new way out to become a
movie star. A short trip to Hong Kong in 1970 where Lee received an enthusiastic
reception played a part in his eventual decision to work in Hong Kong. Although The
Green Hornet was a failure in the U.S., it made Lee a popular star in Hong Kong and
among Chinese communities in Southeast Asia.
130
Later, he recalled the following
about his choice:
At this moment, I found that it was meaningless to go on shooting
movies like that because I did not fit in with my roles. This is not to say

128
Sara, “Robin’s New Love Rival,” TV Radio Show, October 1966, Reprinted in John Little, 32.
129
John Hardie, “The Man with a Stomach Like a Brick Wall,” The Hong Kong Star, November 1971,
Reprinted in John Little, 107.
130
Linda Lee, 95-96.
84
that I could not play my roles well. The truth is: I am a yellow-faced
Chinese, I cannot possibly become an idol for Caucasians, not to
mention rousing the emotions of my countrymen. Because of this, I
decided to come back to serve the Chinese film industry.
131
His move to Hong Kong marked the most crucial event in his life. Shaw
Brothers and Golden Harvest both offered him excellent deals, but the final deal was
cut with Golden Harvest, a new film company founded in 1970 by Raymond Chow.
Chow played a significant role in making Bruce Lee a legend. Chow was a former
employee of Shaw Brothers but he did not repeat the business practices he learned
there. At that time, the Shaw Brothers studio was running “movietown,” an old-
fashioned Hollywood-like studio system. Chow instead organized his Golden Harvest
studio in a more frugal and pragmatic fashion.
132
Its quasi-independent production
system, what Steve Fore calls a “satellite model of production,”
133
allowed each
production team to have creative autonomy while ownership still belonged to Golden
Harvest. This practical system appealed to Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan, and Sammo Hung,
whose talents later helped Golden Harvest succeed and dominate the Hong Kong film
industry for three decades. Furthermore, Raymond Chow had a global vision. Golden
Harvest purchased and leased studio facilities and movie theaters in Hong Kong,
Taiwan, Malaysia, and Singapore. Benefiting from the laissez-faire capitalism in
postcolonial Hong Kong, Chow developed connections with a number of international
banks, including Bank of America, and secured his finances from two sources – the

131
Bruce Lee, “Me and Jeet Kune Do,” Taiwan Newspaper, ca. June 1972, Reprinted in Little, 128.
132
Steve Fore, “Golden Harvest Films and the Hong Kong Movie Industry in the Realm of
Globalization,” The Velvet Light Trap 34 (fall 1994): 44.
133
Ibid., 45.
85
Chinese diaspora and foreign capital. Bruce Lee was on the right circuit to make his
global dream come true. After Bruce Lee’s death, Chow continued his alliance with
the West through Jackie Chan. He also co-produced Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
with a Hollywood studio in 1990, which grossed $135 million in the U.S. alone.
Gradually, North American and Europe became huge foreign markets for Hong Kong
cinema. Thus Chow was one of the pioneers who built the Hong Kong global film
empire.
After losing Bruce Lee to Golden Harvest, Shaw Brothers attempted to
dominate the kung fu genre by making Five Fingers of Death starring Lo Lieh. The
film became the first kung fu film to sweep American box offices. Shaw Brothers did
succeed in stealing the lead in international kung fu film markets.
134
However, it was
the Raymond Chow-Bruce Lee enterprise that made real history. Their films –The Big
Boss (1971, released in the U.S. as Fists of Fury) and Fist of Fury (1972, released in
the U.S. as The Chinese Connection) became huge hits throughout Asia.
135
The local
Hong Kong press reported that The Big Boss grossed a total of HK $ 3.2 million
dollars in 19 days, breaking the historical record set by The Sound of Music in 1966 by

134
Stephen Teo, “The 1970s: Movement and Transition,” in The Cinema of Hong Kong: History, Arts,
Identity, ed. Poshek Fu and David Desser (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 97-98.
135
Bey Logan offers an interesting explanation regarding this name switch. Because the American
distributors wanted more exploitative titles for the Hong Kong products they picked up, they often
renamed them. For example, King Boxer became Five Fingers of Death while 36
th
Chamber of Shaolin
(1978) was renamed The Master Killer. For U.S. release, The Big Boss was retitled The Chinese
Connection, inspired by The French Connection (1971), which came out the same year and also dealt
with the illegal shipment of drugs. Fist of Fury was deemed a suitable title for American audiences, but
the word ‘Fist’ was replaced by ‘Fists.’ Somehow, though, the labels of these two films got switched
during shipping and have stayed that way in the U.S. ever since. So The Big Boss is called Fists of Fury,
and Fist of Fury is called The Chinese Connection. From Bey Logan, Hong Kong Action Cinema, 31-32.
86
about $800,000. It became “the most financially successful motion picture to ever play
in Hong Kong.”
136
Predicting the success of Lee’s second film, Fist of Fury, the local
newspaper The China Mail described Lee as having “the Midas touch.”
137
They were
right. Fist of Fury smashed box office records everywhere. Within 13 days, it topped
the record of The Big Boss, with $4 million. Even better, Lee’s third film, Way of the
Dragon (1972, released in the U.S. after Lee’s death as Return of the Dragon), which
was directed and produced by Lee himself, topped the $5 million mark.
As Bruce Lee’s celebrity status grew in Asia, Hong Kong people became more
interested in his career in Hollywood. One Hong Kong magazine article published in
November 1972 well illustrates Hong Kongers’ expectation of Lee as a transnational
star. It depicted Lee’s story as follows:
At the age of 32, he is something of a trans-Pacific Man. When he’s not
in Hong Kong, making buckets of money starring in Mandarin-
language productions, he’s in Hollywood, playing support roles and
trying to break into the front ranks of American cinema and television
stars. It’s a frustrating sort of life that could give a lesser-willed man a
split personality. “Sometimes I feel a little schizophrenic about it,” Lee
says. “When I wake up in the morning, I have to remember which side
of the ocean I’m on, and whether I’m the superstar or the exotic
Oriental support player.”
138

Even though Lee was not a big star yet in the U.S., by calling Lee “something
of a trans-Pacific Man,” this article anticipated Lee’s fame in the U.S. It must have
been difficult for Lee to pursue a career in two different film industries and cultures.

136
Jack Moore, “Bruce Lee – the $3 Million Box-Office Draw,” Sunday Post-Herald (Hong Kong),
November 21, 1971, Reprinted in Little, 111.
137
H.S.Chow, “Midas Bruce to Make New Film,” The China Mail (Hong Kong), November 22, 1971.
Reprinted in Little, 116.
138
Jack Moore, “Superstar Bruce Lee,” Off Duty/Pacific, November 1972. Reprinted in Little, 149.
87
However, it can be said that Lee could benefit on both sides of the Pacific Ocean. On
the American side, he was quite a unique “Oriental,” who had superior talent in
Oriental martial arts, and was married to a white American, and had two bi-racial
children. To Hong Kongers, Lee was a proud “hometown” boy working in Hollywood.
With his American citizenship on the one hand and martial arts skills on the other
hand, Bruce Lee could successfully travel back and forth between the Hong Kong and
Hollywood film industries. He appealed to both sides of the Pacific as a “mixture of
Ancient China-Modern America”
139
and a “fascinating blend of East and West.”
140

The peculiar postcolonial Hong Kong identity was embedded in Bruce Lee’s life and
was the driving force that led Lee’s career as an international kung fu star.

Contribution to Hong Kong Cinema
When Bruce Lee arrived in Hong Kong, Mandarin martial arts cinema was
dominant.
141
Lee criticized the quality of these films: “They were awful. For one thing,
everybody fights all the time, and what really bothered me was that they all fought
exactly the same way. Wow, nobody’s really like that. When you get into a fight,
everybody reacts differently, and it is possible to act and fight at the same time. Most

139
Cindy Thal, “Bruce Lee, Chinese Movie Star, Speaks to Garfield Seniors,” Seattle High School
Newspaper, Reprinted in Little, 26.
140
Fredda Dudley Balling, “Bruce Lee: Love Knows No Geography,” TV Picture Life, 1966. Reprinted
in Little, 38.
141
Bruce Lee shot the film in Cantonese but his films were dubbed and released in Mandarin in
Southeast Asian markets.
88
Chinese films have been very superficial and one-dimensional.”
142
Lee wished to
create a new cinema – he not only improved the action choreography, making it real
and authentic, but also changed the martial arts genre in many ways.
First, with his genuine kung fu talents, Bruce Lee shifted the trend of martial
arts filmmaking from swordplay to hand-to-hand, unarmed combat fights. Before Lee,
Hong Kong martial arts films were more oriented to unrealistic swordplay fighting
since most of actors were not professional martial artists. Even realistic kung fu films
such as the Huang Feihong film series used actors who pretended to be real. However,
Bruce Lee was a genuine “true-to-life fighter,” which strongly appealed to the
audiences. Lee believed that kung fu in cinema should not be different from the real
kung fu he practiced. He liked to use long takes and wide framing rather than close
ups because he wanted to show that his action was authentic, not a fake. John Little
notes that Lee was popularly called “Lee Sam Keuk” (Lee Three Kicks) after the
release of The Big Boss.
143
In the film, Lee showcased three consecutive kicks by
which he dispatched an adversary. It was “something that had never been done before
in Hong Kong martial arts cinema.”
144
Lee’s martial arts skills were the major
attraction of his films.
145

Second, Bruce Lee opened up multi-racial casting in Hong Kong cinema. In
the 1960s, before Bruce Lee came to the Hong Kong film industry, the door of the

142
Linda Lee, 100.
143
John Little, 165.
144
Ibid., 165.
145
H.S.Chow, in Little, 116.
89
Hong Kong industry was mostly open to Chinese or other East Asians such as Korean
and Japanese. Bruce Lee was one of the pioneers who paved the way for Westerners to
participate in Hong Kong productions. Lee cast many Westerners, including Chuck
Norris, the American karate champion for his directorial debut film, Way of the
Dragon. Norris played Lee’s nemesis in the Coliseum scene, which became one of the
most infamous duel scenes in martial arts cinema. For Game of Death, Lee cast
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, the former black basketball star who turned out to be a karate
expert.
In her memoir of her late husband, Linda Lee Cadwell asserts that Lee’s
casting of these Westerners had an aesthetic as well as a commercial purpose: Bruce
Lee believed that his films would be more appealing to his Chinese audiences if their
Chinese hero conquered other people of color. Some people view Lee’s films as
ethnocentric or xenophobic because of this. However, his cast of foreigners had an
aesthetic purpose as well. Bruce Lee wanted to fight with professional martial arts
experts rather than actors or dancers because it would make his film more realistic and
authentic.
146

In addition to Linda Lee Cadwell’s claim, I would add one more reason for
Lee’s multi-racial cast. It is based on his vision of kung fu and his friendship with
martial arts experts across race and ethnicity. Throughout his life-time, Lee developed
his own martial arts techniques called Jeet Kune Do. Called “the style of no style,”

146
Linda Lee, 124-125.
90
Jeet Kune Do incorporated many different skills from other martial arts such as boxing,
judo, jujitsu, karate, hapkido and Taekwondo. This meant that Lee virtually discarded
all of the traditional Wing Chun methodology he learned in Hong Kong. He believed
Wing Chun was too restrictive.
147
Instead, he developed Jeet Kune Do as a mixture of
various martial arts and thus made friends across different disciplines, including Dan
Inosanto, Jhoon Lee, Taky Kimura, James Yimme Lee, Wong Insik, Ji Han Jae, and
Chuck Norris. They shared a passion for martial arts and inspired each other to
develop of their techniques. Moreover, Lee opened his dojo to people of other races,
which was taboo among Chinese communities at that time. People like Kareem Abdul-
Jabbar, Steve McQueen, James Coburn, Lee Martin and screenwriter Stirling
Silliphant became Lee’s private students. This openness implies that Lee was a
flexible and unorthodox successor of the Chinese martial arts tradition. Friendship
across color and nationality made Lee open to casting foreign experts and
incorporating other techniques to improve the quality of fighting scenes in his films.
Third, Bruce Lee paved the way for international co-productions and
galvanized international kung fu markets. Enter the Dragon marks the first time that a
major American film studio, Warner Brothers, went to Hong Kong to make an
international martial arts movie. Released one month after Bruce Lee’s sudden death
on July 20, 1973, in the U.S., the film became Warner Brother’s top money-maker. It
grossed more than $200 million and became the most famous and classic martial arts

147
John Little, 29.
91
movie of all. Such success encouraged Hong Kong’s two major studios – Shaw
Brothers and Golden Harvest – to cooperate with foreign companies in subsequent
years. Films spawned from these collaborations include Shaw-British Hammer’s
Legend of the Seven Golden Vampires (1974) and Shatter (1974); Shaw-Warner’s
Cleopatra Jones and the Casino of Gold (1975); Shaw-Italian co-productions Blood
Money (1974), Supermen against the Orient (1974), and Superman against the
Amazons (1975); and the Golden Harvest-Australian co-production The Man from
Hong Kong (1975). This illustrates how Bruce Lee initiated Hong Kong cinema’s
early efforts to launch international markets through kung fu. Hong Kong cinema
established its reputation as a global cinema in the subsequent years of the 1980s and
1990s.
Finally, Bruce Lee expanded Hong Kong cinema’s diasporic markets in
Southeast Asia. Members of the Chinese diaspora all over Southeast Asia
enthusiastically responded to Lee’s films. As one Hong Kong magazine pointed out,
“It looks as if the film industry in Southeast Asia has found its savior in the person of
Bruce Lee, the much talked-about fighter-actor of Mandarin films.”
148
Not only Bruce
Lee’s genuine kung fu skills but also his screen persona as a nationalistic hero
appealed to Chinese communities abroad. Throughout his kung fu films, Lee plays a
protector who fights for immigrant Chinese under foreign oppression. He invoked
Chinese national pride, which Chinese audiences everywhere found comforting.

148
Piera Kwan, “The Violence Cult,” The Hong Kong Standard, February 10, 1973. Reprinted in Little,
154.
92
Set in Thailand, Lee’s first film, The Big Boss, deals with the hardship of
Chinese immigrant factory workers who suffer under the hands of Thai gangsters and
an evil Chinese capitalist. Lee plays Cheng Chiu-on, a naïve and innocent brat.
However, the awareness of foreign oppression of Chinese people ignites his sense of
righteousness and he turns into a real hero. Lee’s directorial debut film, Way of the
Dragon, also deals with the hardship of Chinese immigrants, this time those living in
Italy. Lee plays Tang Long, who flies to Rome to help in his relative’s restaurant. He
defeats Italian gangsters and earns back peace and safety for his Chinese immigrant
family. Finally, Lee’s second film, Fist of Fury, deals with the obstacle of Chinese
under Japanese occupation in a remote past. Lee plays a mainland Chinese, Chen Zhen,
who fights against Japanese and Russian imperialists who insult his martial arts school.
Two memorable fighting scenes in this film became the signature of Lee’s
nationalistic hero image. One is a signboard scene in which Lee jumps in the air and
breaks the park signboard that says “No Dogs or Chinese Allowed.” The other scene is
the tragic ending, in which Lee dashes towards Japanese police who aim guns at him.
The famous freeze-frame image with gunshots in the background immortalized Bruce
Lee as a martyr, “dying for a nationalistic cause.”
149
As people who were having
difficulty adjusting to foreign countries, Chinese expatriates could easily identify with
such a nationalistic hero.
Stephen Teo points out that it was the abstract and apolitical nature of Lee’s

149
Stephen Teo, Hong Kong Cinema: The Extra Dimensions (London: BFI, 1997), 115.
93
nationalism that particularly appealed to Chinese diasporic audiences.
The nationalism Lee’s films invoked is better understood as an abstract
kind of cultural nationalism, manifesting itself as an emotional wish
among Chinese people living outside China to identify with China and
things Chinese, even though they may not have been born there or
speak its national language or dialects. They wish to affirm themselves
and fulfill their cultural aspirations by identifying with the ‘mother
culture,’ producing a rather abstract and a political type of
nationalism.
150

It was this abstract nature of Lee’s nationalism that not only Chinese but also
foreign audiences found appealing. Foreign viewers, from Asians to Westerners,
enthusiastically responded to Lee’s heroism in spite of ethnocentric messages. In Fist
of Fury, Bruce Lee embodied the anti-Japanese sentiments that many Chinese felt
during the Japanese invasion and occupation of Hong Kong during World War II. The
film clearly portrays the Japanese as evil and demotes Japanese martial arts. However,
in spite of anti-Japanese sentiments, the film was a great success in Japan. Lee’s kung
fu films rather inspired the Japanese martial arts genre and produced Japanese
imitators such as Sonny Chiba. In terms of the West, as Stephen Teo notes, “There is a
decidedly ironic side to his success in the West, since an anti-Western sentiment is
more than apparent in his persona.”
151
He elaborates:
The case of Bruce Lee is of particular interest because his international
appeal does not appear to contradict his forthright insistence on his
Chineseness….To many Western viewers, Lee’s nationalism is non-
starter. American admirers of Lee’s cult dwell in his art as a reaction
against racism….Nationalism, where it features as part of the man’s
character-building framework, concerns Lee’s struggle to win the
public admission that Asians can be Americans too. But it is still Lee’s

150
Ibid., 111.
151
Ibid., 110.
94
kung fu style and methods which attract and make up the most
important components of his philosophy, as seen in Dragon. Another
component is Lee’s sex appeal and magnetic personality, which draws
Western audiences to him irrespective of the xenophobic streak in his
Hong Kong films.
152

In the following, I will discuss how Bruce Lee Chinese nationalism was
filtered through American eyes as struggle against racism in 1970s America. Bruce
Lee’s screen persona as one with Chinese national pride could be read as an underdog
racial minority hero. Along with Lee’s sex appeal and magnetic personality, the socio-
political, historical background that I will discuss below helped Lee establish the kung
fu craze in American society. It is this legacy that people in Bosnia remember when
they commemorate Bruce Lee.

The 1970s America
The early 1970s were an interesting time period in the history of American
popular culture. The kung fu boom, as martial arts magazine Black Belt puts it,
“hemorrhaged, like an exploding volcano spewing forth molten streams of lava.”
153
As
P. Flanigan argues, it was not film alone that caused the meteoric rise of martial arts
madness. Capitalist opportunism and marketing simultaneously commodified kung fu
in every aspect of popular culture, from television shows, books, novels, magazines,
and comics, to music.
154
Americans rushed to learn and practice kung fu in real life.
Faubion Bowers called it “America’s obsession with the martial arts,” and described it as:

152
Ibid., 113.
153
Charles Lucas, “Profile of a Great American Fad,” Blackbelt Magazine, Oct 1974.
154
P. Flanigan, “Kung Fu Krazy or The Invasion of the ‘Chop Suey Easterns,’” Cineaste VI(3) 1974: 10.
95
In America, practice of these imported exotica has spread everywhere –
to college campuses, police academies, prisons, drug rehabilitation
centers, and well beyond the expected health clubs and physical culture
institutes which offer private tuition in fighting arts from Asia. The
clientele is no longer limited to the sports-oriented heavyweight or
body-beautiful cultist. Nowadays, you find classes cross-sectioned with
doctors, lawyers, merchants, architects.
155

Bruce Lee and his Hong Kong kung fu films were at the heart of the kung fu
phenomenon. In 1973, suddenly, kung fu films such as Five Fingers of Death
(a.k.a.King Boxer, The Chinese boxer, 1970), Deep Thrust: the Hand of Death (a.k.a.
Lady Whirlwind), Fists of Fury (a.k.a. The Big Boss, 1971), and The Chinese
Connection (a.k.a. Fist of Fury, 1972) swept American box offices. David Desser
notes:
In 1973, American audiences thrilled to the exploits of Bruce Lee – and
Bruce Lee’s films were not alone at the top of the charts. That May,
perhaps for the first and only time in the history of the American
cinema, not one, not two, but three foreign-made films took home the
week’s top box-office grosses. This unprecedented accomplishment
seems to have gone unremarked at the time….It was a strange
phenomenon,…the storm.
156

Bruce Lee entered the history of American cinema like that, dynamiting the
screen with unexpected power and grace. American audiences were enraptured by
Bruce Lee’s remarkable kung fu skills and charismatic charms. How Bruce Lee
escalated the kung fu boom and put his stamp on American society in the 1970s can be
best exemplified by one episode in Black Belt’s 1974 article. It reports an interesting

155
Faubion Bowers, “Ah, So! Karate or Monkey Wrench?: An Orientalist Investigates America’s
Obsession with the Martial Arts,” Esquire LXXX no.2 (August 1973): 72.
156
David Desser, “The Kung Fu Craze: Hong Kong Cinema’s First American Reception,” in The
Cinema of Hong Kong : History, Arts, Identity, ed. Poshek Fu and David Desser (Cambridge
University Press, 2000), 19-20.
96
phenomenon regarding nunchaku, the weapon Lee often used in his films.
Lee’s use of the nunchaku in films and the subsequent rash of neo-
nunchaknists upset law enforcement officials around the world. In
some areas, there are periodic de-nunchaku programs consisting of a
sudden shakedown on the streets. Although in the U.S. there has been
no action on the federal level, some states have outlawed the nunchaku
through legislation. In California, an “opinion” handed down by the
attorney general declared it a deadly weapon under section 12020 of the
penal code, an action that was followed by a wave of arrests. A later
legislative amendment to the penal code permits possession of the
nunchaku with certain restrictions. Whether or not the retailers thought
the real nunchaku might be a dangerous weapon, they nevertheless
stocked toy ones made of plastic. Martial arts stores did a land-office
business in mail-order and walk-in sales of the nunchuck and all other
kinds of equipment as well. Mattel Toys taught kung-fu to their GI Joe
dolls, and in the war-game section, a roll of the dice unveiled some
ancient mystery or proverb of Chinese martial art.
157

Note that this article was published in 1974 after Lee’s death in 1973. It is
ironic that his fame in the U.S. was coincided with his death. Throughout his life, Lee
made four and a half films, considering that Game of Death was an unfinished project.
In the U.S., two and a half movies were released after his death. Lee’s Hong Kong
film Way of the Dragon (1972), in which Lee performed multiple roles as a director,
producer, choreographer and actor, was released in 1974 with a new title, The Return
of the Dragon. The new title obviously signifies its attempt to cash in on Lee’s
posthumous fame. In 1978, The Game of Death was completed and released by
Raymond Chow and Robert Clouse, who directed Enter the Dragon. They mixed ten
minutes of genuine Bruce Lee footage (the famous pagoda fight scene) with new
scenes in which a Bruce Lee double replaced him.

157
Charles Lucas, “Profile of a Great American Fad,” Blackbelt magazine, October 1974.
97
Lee’s mysterious sudden death in 1973 at the age of 32 rather dynamited his
stardom. Bruce Lee died at Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Hong Kong but was buried at
Lakeview Cemetery in Seattle. At the funeral in Hong Kong, thousands of Hong Kong
residents flooded the streets to see him one last time. Preposterous rumors circulated
about his death in spite of the doctor’s diagnosis of cerebral edema. In Hong Kong, his
name and personality were blatantly exploited. Imitators sprung up with mocking
names such as Bruce Le, Bruce Ly, and Bruce Lai. In the West, premature death
brought him a first-class ticket to the souvenir shop, just as it did to celebrity death-
mask icons like Marilyn Monroe, James Dean and Jimi Hendrix.
158
The icons of his
screaming face and sinewy fist have passed into the Western pop culture lexicon. A
recent article in Time magazine singled out Lee, along with Mother Teresa and Jackie
Robinson, as one of the twenty most courageous people of the past century.
159

David Miller’s memoir of Bruce Lee as one of his American fans captures how
Lee enthralled American audiences. He describes his first encounter with Bruce Lee as
follows:
The picture that night was Enter the Dragon. The house lights dimmed,
flickered, went out. The red Warner Brothers logo flashed. And there
he stood. There was a silence around him. The air crackled as the
camera moved toward him and he grew in the center of the screen,
luminous. This man. My man. The Dragon. One minute into the movie,
Bruce Lee threw his first punch. With it, a power came roiling up from
Lee’s belly, affecting itself in blistering waves not only upon his on-
screen opponent, but on the movie audience. A wind blew through me.
My hands shook; I quivered electrically from head to toe. And then

158
Stefan Hammond, Hollywood East: Hong Kong Movies and the People Who Make Them (New York:
McGraw-Hill Companies, 2000), 91.
159
Judith Rosen, “Bruce Lee Kicks into High Gear,” Publishers Weekly v.247 no.45 (Nov. 6, 2000):30 -1.
98
Bruce Lee launched the first real kick I had ever seen. My jaw fell open
like the business end of a dump truck. This man could fly. Not like
Superman –better – his hands and his feet flew whistling through sky.
Yes, better: this wasn’t simply a movie, a shadowbox fantasy; there
was a seed of reality in every Lee movement. Yet the experience of
watching him felt just like a dream. Bruce Lee was unlike anyone I (or
any of us) had seen.
160

Miller’s memoir illustrates how Lee, as “five-foot fury,” mesmerized
American audiences. Lee’s quick, powerful, and graceful kung fu performance as a
real martial artist delivered an excitement that cannot be created solely by dizzying
special effects or digital editing. Lee’s sex appeal and animalism also caused
spontaneous visceral satisfaction among American audiences. His trademark battle
whoops and practice of “licking his own blood to fuel his raw violence before
attacking again with renewed fury”
161
brought spontaneous applause and screams from
the seats. As Hsiung-Ping Chiao puts it, Lee’s muscular, bare chest unremittingly
demonstrated a pristine masculinity and immediately lent him an animal-like
quality.
162

However, Lee’s charming star image characterized above could have not been
favorably accepted without the new political, social, and economic changes in
American society at that time. Bruce Lee’s popularity cannot be separated from
historical events such as the Civil Rights Movement, anti-Vietnam war protests,
Nixon’s visit to China in 1972, the new Asian immigration law of 1965, and growing

160
David Miller, The Tao of Bruce Lee: A Martial Arts Memoir (New York: Harmony Books, 2000), 4.
161
Cheng Yu, “Anatomy of a Legend,” in A Study of Hong Kong Cinema in the Seventies (1970-1979),
ed. Li Cheuk-to (Hong Kong: HKIFF/Urban Council, 1984).
162
Hsiung-Ping Chiao, “Bruce Lee: His influence on the Evolution of the Kung Fu Genre,” Journal of
Popular Film and Television 9. no.1 (1981): 40.
99
racial tolerance towards Asians and Asian Americans following the ideology of the
model minority. Under such circumstances, Lee’s kung fu skill, anti-hero star quality,
and even the cultural nationalism he embodied sparked the counter-cultural
imagination rather than cultural resistance.
Since the 1950s, the Third world began fighting for de-colonization and
independence from the Western colonialism. Its battles with Western powers were
bloody and violent. The First world was also affected by these events, and political
radicalism rocked both sides. The U.S. was no exception. Gary Y.Okihiro asserts that
World War II gave an impetus for decolonization in Asia and provided an opening for
social mobility among racialized minorities, women and workers in the United
States.
163
In fact, the U.S. was the country that went through the biggest changes. It
faced a national identity crisis as a result of events such as the Civil Rights movement,
race riots, the assassinations of the Kennedy brothers and Martin Luther King, the
Vietnam War, and the Watergate scandal. These events revealed conflicts and
contradictions within the nation; America turned out to be a corrupt and unjust country.
Solidarity across color lines was sealed. Civil Rights activists and anti-Vietnam War
protesters came out into the streets, holding Mao’s Red book to support the fight in the
Third World and called for radical change in American society. American
involvement in the Vietnam War (1959-1975) was severely attacked. The Vietnam
War is still remembered as the least supported war by the American people. Lisa Lowe

163
Okihiro, 27.
100
elaborates how the War impacted the American national psyche.
The Vietnam War shook the stability and coherence of America’s
understanding of itself. An “unpopular” war contested by social
movements, the press, and the citizenry, a disabling war from which the
United States could not emerge “victorious” – there is perhaps no
single event in this century that has had such power to disunify the
American public, disrupting traditional unities of “community,”
“nation,” and “culture.”
164

Disillusioned by the nation, many Americans turned away from mainstream
white culture and rushed into newly possible alternatives such as rebel youth culture
(sex, drug, rock n’roll), hippie culture, and Asian culture. Among Asian cultures, in
particular, President Richard Nixon’s visit to Red China in 1972 triggered new
interests in anything Chinese. It brought a wave of books, programs, and films with
Chinese or Asian themes and topics. Diplomatic relations and cross-cultural
exchanges began, and this offered a favorable environment for the reception of Hong
Kong kung fu films.
165
David Desser argues that those subcultural, disillusioned,
disaffected audiences who had opposed the Vietnam War or those who were more
radically and generally alienated from the white mainstream culture found Bruce Lee
and other Hong Kong kung fu films liberating.
166
According to him, the stories of
exploited workers and subaltern peoples resisting the forces of exploitation and

164
Lisa Lowe, Immigrant Acts: On Asian American Cultural Politics (Durham: Duke University Press,
1998), 3.
165
An interesting anecdote is that Jet Li, a contemporary kung fu star, was in the Chinese wushu
(martial arts) team that represented China and toured four U.S. cities in 1974. The team demonstrated
their training in front of President Nixon and Henry Kissinger on the White House lawn. This is one of
the examples of how diplomatic gestures at that time helped disperse the Asian martial arts in America.
166
David Desser, “Consuming Asia: Chinese and Japanese Popular Culture and the American
Imaginary,” Multiple Modernities: Cinemas and Popular Media in Transcultural East Asia, ed. Jenny
Kwok Wah Lau (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2003), 186.
101
colonialism in kung fu films particularly appealed to racial minorities such as African
Americans, Latinos, and Asian Americans. Alex Ben Block wrote for Esquire
magazine in 1973:
Not just Asians but also young black African Americans or young
minorities of all kinds, even for Caucasians who came from lower
economic backgrounds, Bruce Lee was a hero. He represented someone
who was able to break out of all the things that seem to bind us in
society and keep us from becoming a success.
167

Clearly, Lee’s films portrayed him as a “ghetto” or “working class” hero. Lee
fought on the side of the oppressed classes and racial minorities against humiliation
and contempt from established powers, whether they were Italian gangsters, Japanese
imperialists, or white racists. Having no hero of their own in the media, people of
color in the U.S. could have identified easily with the small Chinese man. As Tony
Rayns intones, Lee’s films were “working class cinema, a cinema of emotion, a
cinema of deeds rather than words.”
168

Black Connection
Among others, Bruce Lee’s appeal to black audiences requires further
investigation. Many scholars emphasized how Bruce Lee bridged African and Asian
cultures. Amy Abugo Ongiri argues that “images of Bruce Lee at least as popular in

167
Alex Ben Block, “The Hong Kong Style: Part I,” Esquire LXXX no.2 (August 1973): 77.
168
Tony Rayns, “Bruce Lee and Other Stories,” in A Study of Hong Kong Cinema in the Seventies
(1970-1979), ed. Li Cheuk-to (Hong Kong: HKIFF/Urban Council, 1984), 27.
102
many Black homes as were images of Martin Luther King, possibly even more so.”
169

Indeed, the Chinese cultural nationalism Lee invoked in his films was similar to the
logic of the Black Arts Movement, which was part of the political Black Power
movement that began in the 1960s. Blacks wished to affirm themselves and fulfilled
their cultural aspirations by identifying with the black mother culture such as folk
story, music, art, and so on. Lee’s eager search for national pride probably resonated
with the sentiment of black people who had been deprived of racial pride and dignity
by white people.
Kung fu films were often double features with the blaxploitation films in
downtown ghetto theatres specifically designed for black audiences.
170
Blaxploitation
was the new wave of black action cinema in the early 1970s. The commercial success
of Ossie Davis’s Cotton Comes to Harlem (1970) and Melvin Van Peebles’s Sweet
Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song (1971) proved that films targeting specifically black
audiences could make money. Suddenly, a new genre called blaxploitation sprang up.
It featured excessive violence and sex, and presented an aggressive Black, urban
outlaw hero/ heroine usually as a drug dealer, a pimp, or a cop who fights against the
Mafia or a corrupt white police force. Famous examples include Shaft (1971), Superfly
(1972), and The Mack (1973). They were “shot quickly, with a low budget and little

169
Amy Abugo Ongiri, “He Wanted to Be Just Like Bruce Lee: African Americans, Kung Fu Theater
and Cultural Exchange at the Margins,” Journal of Asian American Studies 5 no.1 (February 2002): 33.
170
Desser, “The Kung Fu Craze,” 25.
103
care for costly or time-consuming aesthetics,”
171
but they became extremely popular
among black audiences. Mark A. Reid argues that these new black action films
reflected the black community’s increasing rejection of nonviolent protest and
growing black power against white society.
172
No wonder kung fu films were beloved
by black audiences who supported blaxploitation as well. Both called “downtown
genre,”
173
they had many similarities – the extreme violence, outlaw heroes, and the
theme of protest against mainstream society.
Interestingly, these two genres were synthesized into one sub-genre that
presented black male or female martial arts experts. These films were co-produced by
Hong Kong and Hollywood studios. Jim Kelly, who is remembered as Mr. Williams in
Enter the Dragon, played “black Bruce Lee” in Black Belt Jones (1974) and its sequel
Black Belt Jones 2: Tattoo Connection (1978). He even reproduced Lee’s
characteristic facial mannerisms and stances in his fighting sequences.
174
Tamara
Dobson starred in Cleopatra Jones (1973) and its sequel Cleopatra Jones and the
Casino of Gold (1975) as a tough, street-smart black female karate expert. She was a
new kind of black action heroine, along with Pam Grier in Coffy (1973) and Foxy
Brown (1974). Such mixing of black and Asian film genres reflects how Lee was
idealized among black audiences. Since Lee himself was a racial minority in the U.S.,

171
James Robert Parish and George H. Hill, Black Action Films: Plots, Critiques, Casts and Credits for
235 Theatrical and Made-for-Television Releases (Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 1989), 1.
172
Mark A. Reid, Redefining Black Film (Berkeley : University of California Press, 1993), 70
173
David Bordwell, Planet Hong Kong: Popular Cinema and the Art of Entertainment (Cambridge,
Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2000), 84.
174
James Robert Parish and George H. Hill, Black Action Films: Plots, Critiques, Casts and Credits for
235 Theatrical and Made-for-Television Releases (Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 1989), 32.
104
black audiences could easily identify with him. Whether or not it was realistically
possible, black youths, dreaming to be like Bruce Lee, rushed into kung fu schools and
practiced kung fu everywhere. Jim Kelly and Tamara Dobson in blaxploitation films
were probably the realization of their dreams, at least on the film screen. With no
money and no power, the “body” seemed the only thing under their full command and
the only way to gain fame and monetary success. Mastery of martial arts is a long
process of involving meditation, breathing control, and sustained discipline. Black
people probably respected Lee’s endless efforts towards self-improvement and
physical mastery, as well as the energy he conveyed on film. As Yvonne Tasker notes,
Lee offered them “fantasies of physical empowerment.”
175

Bruce Lee’s Influence on Asians/ Asian Americans
Bruce Lee’s influence on Asian/Asian American communities is as important
as his impact on the Black community. When Bruce Lee entered the American popular
scene Asian American society was undergoing important changes. Such changes made
Bruce Lee favorably accepted not only by Asian American society but also white
mainstream society.
First, the new Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 led to a dramatic rise
of Asian populations in the U.S. It marked a watershed moment in the history of Asian
immigration by abolishing “national origins” as the basis for allocating immigration

175
Yvonne Tasker, “Fists of Fury: Discourse of Race and Masculinity in the Martial Arts Cinema,” in
Race and the Subject of Masculinities, ed. Harry Stecopoulos and Michael Uebel (Durham: Duke
University Press, 1997), 317.
105
quotas, which systematically had favored European immigration but excluded Asian
immigration. The new law created a fair chance for many Asians to immigrate to the
U.S. on equal footing. In subsequent years, as Asian American communities have
achieved more demographic visibility and economic and cultural power, the
mainstream American society gradually has recognized its existence and
accomplishments.
Second, the ideology of the model minority was emerging, which particularly
promoted the Asian American’s socioeconomic success. In this new paradigm, the
Asian American became a role model to other racial minorities, especially African
Americans. In January 1966, the New York Times Magazine, published U.C. Berkeley
professor William Peterson’s article, entitled “Success Story: Japanese-American
Style.”
176
In December 1966, U.S. News and World Report featured a similar story
called “Success Story of One Minority in the U.S.”
177
Each article emphasized
Japanese Americans’ and Chinese Americans’ remarkable successful stories,
respectively. They posited that their success came from Asian family values and
traditional hard-work ethics, which they said were lacking in African American
communities. U.S. News particularly emphasized Chinese Americans’ reluctance to
receive welfare checks, comparing it to an opposite trend among African Americans.
Many Asian American scholars have criticized this model minority thesis.
They argue that it is used to pitch Asian Americans against African Americans and to

176
William Petersen, The New York Times Magazine, January 6, 1966: 20-43.
177
U.S. News and World Report, December 26. 1966: 73–8.
106
exclude the discussion of systematic racial inequality in American society. In fact, as
Henry Yu and Lisa Lowe point out, the notion of the model minority is nothing
different from the old notion of Asians as a racial problem. They both argue that the
model minority theory still depends on exoticism and Orientalism, where Asians are
defined as the opposite of everything American.
178

Regardless of its ideological implications, the model minority thesis portrayed
Asian Americans positively and helped Bruce Lee promote his career. Bruce Lee’s
marriage with white American Linda Emery and their racially “mixed-up” son
Brandon Lee were publicized optimistically for the marketing of The Green Hornet.
Magazine and newspaper titles were emblematic: “Bruce Lee: Love Knows No
Geography: Bruce and Linda had to overcome many obstacles. But with faith in each
other –and the human race – they proved their marriage could last!” and “Bruce Lee:
Our Mixed Marriage Brought Us a Miracle of Love.” These articles featured a highly
dramatized, even poetic, interracial love story between Linda and Bruce Lee. Their bi-
racial child was praised and celebrated: “He is a handsome meeting of two cultures:
possibly the only blond Chinese baby in the world,”
179
or “a blond-haired, blue-eyed
Chinaman.”
180
Although these articles did not promote Lee and his family as the
model minority they certainly endorsed an interracial marriage and acknowledged
their bi-racial offspring as part of America. This was a reflection of the changing

178
See Lisa Lowe, 19 and Henry Yu, Thinking Orientals: Migration, Contact, and Exoticism in Modern
America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 7.
179
Balling, Reprinted in Little, 41.
180
Moore, Reprinted in Little, 150.
107
social atmosphere of the time that began to see Asians and Asian Americans positively
and accept them into the American society.
Finally, since the late 60s Asian Americans began to raise their voices and
challenge institutionalized racism through the “Yellow Power Movement,” which was
part of the Civil Rights Movement. The Yellow Power Movement organized many
activities including mainstream media criticism. The mainstream media criticism
pursued two main activities: one was to criticize the dominant media to reveal the
ideological implications of stereotypical representations of Asians/Asian Americans,
and the other was to make alternative, independent media that should serve the needs
of Asian American communities and explore the questions of Asian American
identities. The major criticism of mainstream media centered on Hollywood
representation of Asian people: mostly, Asian men as emasculated and Asian women
as submissive. With this background, Bruce Lee was welcomed by the Asian
American community for his efforts to break into white-dominated Hollywood and
challenge the stereotypical Asian portrayals. Yuan Shu points out that Lee’s kung fu
films became a possible scenario through which Asian Americans could rethink and
reinvent the Asian male body.
Although not directly involved in any Asian American movement in
the United States or any decolonization movement in East and
Southeast Asia, Lee had the same impulse to redefine Asian and Asian
American masculinity and deployed his own body as a location of
nationalism and remasculinization in his films. In other words, Lee
tried to rationalize what Kaminsky calls “dirty fighting” as a means to
break away from “the Asian soft body” represented in American
108
popular culture and to remasculinize the Asian male body as tough,
aggressive, and competitive.
181
Bruce Lee’s remasculinization of the Asian male body is well reflected in the
paper entitled “Bruce Lee vs. Fu Manchu: Kung Fu films and Asian American
Stereotypes in America,” published in Bridge: An Asian American perspective.
182
The
article summarizes how Bruce Lee was received in Asian American communities. The
article first chronicles Hollywood stereotypes of Asians and discusses their negative
effects on the Asian Americans psyche. Then, it contrasts those stereotypes to Bruce
Lee’s image as an authoritative kung fu fighter. Calling him “the first Chinese
American superstar,” the article discusses the symbolic meaning of the last scene in
Enter the Dragon, in which Lee smashes mirrors to find and kill the villain Han.
As he smashes mirrors all around him, finally locating and eliminating
the comic book character at the center of the maze, he strikes out
against all the collective fixed ideas that oppress whole groups of
people. To attack and symbolically defeat such notions is to oppose
racism close to its heart, the stereotypic process by means of which
human beings are defined and dismissed with reference to inappropriate
and invariant ethnic characteristics. It is Bruce Lee’s great contribution
to American society and to his Asian American fellows that he was
able to make this sensitive and intelligent gesture in the artistic and
symbolic medium of film, attacking all ethnic clichés and the
stereotyping process itself in an articulate and uncompromising mythic
statement.
183

Bruce Lee’s remarkable fighting skills and energy were positively conceived
as a challenge to Hollywood stereotype of the weak Asian man. On the other hand, he

181
Yuan Shu, “Reading the Kung Fu Film in an American Context: From Bruce Lee to Jackie Chan –
Critical Essay,” Journal of Popular Film and Television 31 no.2 (Summer 2003): 53.
182
Judith Farquhar and Mary L.Doi, staff members of AAMHRC (Asian American Mental Health
Research Center), Bridge (fall 1978).
183
Ibid., 40.
109
could be viewed as another Asian stereotype. In The Deathly Embrace: Orientalism
and Asian American Identity, Sheng-mei Ma argues that in fact Lee fits into another of
Hollywood’s historical Asian stereotypes, that of the barbaric Orient/Yellow Peril. Ma
admits that when he first saw Bruce Lee as a teenager in Taiwan he fetishized him like
many other teens. However, now as a grown-up Chinese scholar based in U.S., he sees
Lee differently:
Having lived in the West for some time now, I find those moments of
martial arts particularly unsettling because they fall into the stereotype
of the barbaric Oriental. Although none of the films depict him in the
image of the archvillain Fu Manchu, Lee’s ruthless superhuman energy
lends itself to such a coupling with evil. ….To the Western audience,
the Chinese hero confronts his enemies with an amazing amount of
savagery, one that befits the stereotype of “Yellow Peril” in the
Western consciousness. Just as an audience cheers the hero’s triumph,
which echoes the worldwide decolonization in the late 1960s, one could
secretly retain the age-old bias against the Orient.
184

While most scholars emphasize the counter-cultural aspects of Bruce Lee’s
kung fu craze in the U.S., Sheng-Mei Ma points out there could be another side behind
Lee’s success. This makes sense to certain degree, given that Bruce Lee’s character in
Enter the Dragon fits to Ma’s description of the barbaric Orient, and this film made
Lee most popular in Western worlds. Stephen Teo elaborates how Lee was forced to
play a mere action hero:
This is surely an important work in Lee’s career as it shows Lee at a
certain disadvantage in the hands of Western filmmakers… Even when
judged a superior work by the standards of the kung fu action genre,
Enter the Dragon is really an uneasy amalgamation of antithetical East-
West sentiments. It conveys the West’s antipathy towards Lee’s

184
Sheng-mei Ma, The Deathly Embrace: Orientalism and Asian American Identity (Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota, 2000), 55.
110
nationalism, and it shows a sullen and sulking Lee forced to submit to
the West’s perception of him as a mere hero. Lee’s strong personality
still comes through as he performs a clichéd characterization of the
reserved, inscrutable and humourless Oriental hero so often seen in
Hollywood movies. With the exception of an expository sequence
before the opening credits introducing Lee’s character, and putting his
inheritance of the illustrious Shaolin kung fu tradition into perspective,
the character has no significance beyond the purely mechanical.
185
Given that, it is not surprising that Enter the Dragon was not well received by
Chinese communities. Hsiung-Ping Chiao argues that most Chinese considered the
film Lee’s worst movie.
186
Most of all, they were disappointed by Lee’s “wooden”
character in the film – an emotionless Oriental “James Bond-type of super-secret
agent”
187
working for the British government. This character was strikingly different
from his characters in Hong Kong films as a nationalistic hero. It is somewhat ironic
that Enter the Dragon made Bruce Lee famous worldwide but made him less popular
among Chinese audiences.
Bruce Lee’s legacy in Asian/ Asian Americans is more ironic. On the one hand,
Bruce Lee opened up the door for future Asians and Asian Americans who wish to
work in Hollywood. He inspired many people to pursue American dreams. To the
Chinese, he was the first worldwide superstar to popularize kung fu internationally. To
Asian Americans, Lee was one of a few and the most successful of Asian bodies they
could see on Hollywood screens. Lee demonstrated that the Asian male could be a
muscular action hero. On the other hand, Bruce Lee produced a new stereotype of

185
Teo, 117-118.
186
Hsiung-Ping Chiao, “Bruce Lee: His Influence on the Evolution of the Kung Fu Genre,” Journal of
Popular Film and Television 9 no.1 (1981): 37.
187
Variety, August 22, 1973.
111
Asian man as a kung fu “freak.” His immortal image as a kung fu fighter was too
powerful and resulted in adverse effects. After Bruce Lee, every Asian man “had to”
kung fu fight to be on Hollywood screens. Contemporary successful Chinese
professionals working in Hollywood are either kung fu stars or action choreographers.
Hollywood has given them a chance to work but only within a limited framework.
This may be because, as Sheng-Mei Ma points out, the Asian as “kung fu freak” with
superhuman power is close to an age-old Western perception of the Asian as yellow
peril.
188
It is an irony that contrary to his wish of ending portrayals of Chinese with “a
pig tail” and “slanted eyes,” Lee became a prototype of a new stereotype. However,
his positive influence on Asian/Asian Americans should not be overlooked.
Tony Rayns depicts Bruce Lee’s life story as “simple Chinese peasant boy
standing up, carving out a lonely path for himself in a hostile western world.”
189
Bruce
Lee was a symbol of racial justice for non-Chinese as well as one of national pride to
the Chinese. His life was too short but his legacy continues, as the two statues in Hong
Kong and Bosnia attest.

188
Ma, 58.
189
Rayns, 29.
112
Part 2: Hong Kong Stars in Hollywood
Chapter 4: Jackie Chan’s American Dream in Hollywood
In one scene of Rush Hour (1998) Jackie Chan hangs onto the street sign of
Hollywood Boulevard to run away from Chris Tucker. The original scrip called for
Sunset Boulevard, but Chan suggested switching it to Hollywood. His gesture reflects
his desire and dream for success in Hollywood. For him, hanging on the Hollywood
sign must have had more meaning than just one movie scene. It can be read as a
symbolic sign that Chan finally made it in Hollywood after years of struggle to break
through. His dream had come true. Rush Hour (1998) was a surprise hit, becoming the
7th top grossing film of 1998 in the U.S. It earned $141 million in North America and
$244 million worldwide. Since then, Chan has become the most profitable Asian
action star in Hollywood, making six more films, including Shanghai Noon (2000),
Rush Hour 2 (2001), The Tuxedo (2002), Shanghai Knights (2003), Around the World
in 80 Days (2003), and Rush Hour 3 (2007).
On the other side of the Pacific in the Hong Kong film industry, Chan is a man
of a prolific and long-standing career. Since the late 1970s, he has been at the center of
the most significant changes in Hong Kong cinema – the modernization of the martial
arts genre, the industry’s growth as a global empire in Asia, the brain-drain to
Hollywood, and its sudden decline after the handover. For many years, his versatile
talents as a martial artist, comic actor, stuntman, choreographer, editor, producer,
113
director, and singer contributed to the development of global Hong Kong cinema. He
has won countless awards from the Hong Kong Film Academy and Taiwan Film
Academy for categories such as Best Actor, Best Action Choreograph, Best Action
Movie Director, and Best Picture. By reinventing himself over the 30-year span of his
career, at the age of 53, Chan is still a rigorous action star as well as a filmmaker,
frequently crossing between Hong Kong and Hollywood. As Leon Hunt puts it,
“neither the hand-over of Hong Kong to China nor his belated success in Hollywood
has stopped him making successful films in the now depleted Hong Kong cinema.”
190

No other Hong Kong actor has enjoyed such a long career with international fame.
Such success has made Jackie Chan an emblem of Hong Kong, China, and
even Asia itself. He has been appointed as Ambassador for Hong Kong Tourism (1995,
2003); Asian Pacific Tourism (2006); the Beijing Olympics (2003); Cultural
Ambassador for China (2006); and selected as one of the “Ten Greatest People of
China” by CCTV in 2004. Born to a poor refugee family and growing up to become a
millionaire global star, Chan’s successful life story reflects the story of Hong Kong
itself – the remarkable story of growth and success from a small fishing village to a
cosmopolitan city. As Gina Marchetti puts it, “Like Hong Kong itself, Chan is
sometimes Chinese, sometimes colonial, and always transnational.”
191
In this chapter,

190
Leon Hunt, “Jackie Chan,” in Fifty Contemporary Filmmakers, ed. Yvonne Tasker (New York:
Routledge, 2002), 101.
191
Gina Marchetti, “Jackie Chan and the Black Connection,” in Keyframes: Popular Culture and
Cultural Studies, ed. Matthew Tinkcom and Amy Villarejo (New York: Routledge, 2001), 158.
114
I will discuss how Chan’s life and film career are characterized as Chinese, colonial,
and transnational, and how they affect the global cinema of today.

The Beginning: The Birth of a Comic Hero
Jackie Chan was born on April 7th, 1954 to impoverished parents who fled
from mainland China to Hong Kong during the Civil War. When Chan was seven
years old his father took a job in Australia and he was left behind alone in Hong Kong.
His father enrolled him in the China Drama Academy, a traditional Peking Opera
boarding school. Chan lived there for the following ten years learning martial arts,
acrobatics, singing, and acting. Life in the Academy was harsh and difficult. The
teacher (sifu in Chinese)-student relationship was strictly hierarchical and severely
disciplined. Rigorous training, repeated beatings, punishments, and even starvation
were common practices – practices that would be considered “child abuse” by
American standards. Chan had nowhere else to go, so he stayed. For many years, he
rarely saw his parents. Yet a decade-long love-hate ordeal at the Academy changed his
life. There he developed his martial arts talents, which eventually brought him global
fame.
Like Bruce Lee, Chan started his action career as a child. By the time he
graduated from the Academy at the age of 17, Chan had already appeared in twenty
films as a stuntman or an extra, although these did not play a significant role in
115
his career. Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan’s lives briefly crossed when Chan worked as a
stuntman in Lee’s Fist of Fury and Enter the Dragon.
192
However, after Lee’s
unexpected death in 1973, the possible future connection was terminated. Soon after
Lee died the Hong Kong movie industry began to fail, and Chan was forced to go to
Australia to live with his parents. He had to work in a restaurant and on a construction
site. He was not happy there, but his brief experience in Australia as an overseas
Chinese was not in vain. It became the motif for his films that deal with Chinese
immigrants in foreign settings.
When Chan returned to Hong Kong, he was one of many people who were
used to exploit Bruce Lee’s fame. Signed by director Lo Wei, who made Lee’s first
two Hong Kong films, he was destined to play another “Bruce Lee clone.” Chan
recalls how he was advertised when his first major Hong Kong film came out – his
name was so small on his movie poster compared to the tagline of “the 2
nd
Bruce
Lee.”
193
Jackie Chan – Lo Wei productions such as New Fist of Fury (1976), Shaolin
Wooden Men, To Kill with Intrigue (1977), Magnificent Bodyguard (1978) and
Spiritual Kung Fu (1978) did not do well. As Stephen Teo puts it, “Chan was wooden
in most of them, being required simply to go through the kung fu motions.”
194
Later,

192
In Fist of Fury, Chan doubled for the head villain Mr. Suzuki, getting kicked by Bruce Lee and
flying fifteen feet before hitting the ground. According to Jackie Chan, it was the longest distance a
Hong Kong stuntman had ever been thrown without some kind of safety device. In Enter the Dragon,
Chan played an extra who was hit by Lee. His China Drama Academy friend Sammo Hung played a
bigger role in the beginning scene, in which he sparred with Bruce Lee. From Jackie Chan: My Life, 328.
193
Jackie Chan in Battle Creek Brawl DVD (2004)
194
Stephen Teo, Hong Kong Cinema: The Extra Dimensions (London: BFI, 1997), 123.
116
Lo Wei was criticized for not recognizing the potential of Chan and misusing his
talents.
It was not until Chan developed his own unique action style and character that
he had a breakthrough in his career. In Snake in Eagle’s Shadow (1978) and Drunken
Master (1978), the director Yuen Woo-ping and Jackie Chan brought a comic twist to
the traditional “master-pupil” storyline and invented Chan’s comic action style and a
vulnerable hero character. In Drunken Master, Chan plays Huang Feihong, one of
China’s most famous folk heroes, who has been portrayed in many Hong Kong films.
While most Huang Feihong movies deal with Huang’s heroic behavior in his adult life,
Chan and Yuen Woo-ping created Huang as a mischievous, undisciplined juvenile
delinquent in a genre of kung fu comedy. Chan’s Huang Feihong wants to learn
“drunken boxing,” against his father’s wishes, because his kung fu power oddly comes
from drinking alcohol. Demystifying the legendary hero was an innovative idea and
the result was phenomenal. The film earned Hong Kong $8 million at the box office
and Chan became an instant star “after nearly a decade of slaving away in the movie
business,” as Chan himself puts it.
195

Bruce Lee vs. Jackie Chan
Jackie Chan’s success came from the fact that he found a way to differentiate
himself from Bruce Lee. Without the development of his comic action style and

195
Jackie Chan, I am Jackie Chan: My Life in Action (Ballantine Books, 1999), 335.
117
vulnerable action character, Chan would have disappeared as another Lee imitator in
Hong Kong cinema.
First, unlike Bruce Lee, who wanted to show realistic fighting method based
on the Southern style of martial arts, Chan designed his slapstick kung fu action based
on acrobatics, bodily contortions, and instant reflexes, which demonstrate the Northern
style influenced by Peking Opera. Chan himself explained, “Instead of kicking high
like Bruce Lee, I kick low. He plays the invincible hero, I’m the underdog. His movies
are intense, mine are light.”
196
Chan’s action style well harmonized with his persona as
a talented but mischievous and naïve fighter. In his fights, Chan farts in his opponent’s
face, twists his nose, or sometimes asks for a ‘time-out.’ If Bruce Lee’s image was a
“super human” invincible kung fu fighter, Chan’s image is a next-door neighbor, a
“Hong Kong everyman.”
197
As Steve Fore puts it, he has become a superstar but
“human-sized.”
198

After establishing his style, Chan even humorously joked about his difference
with Bruce Lee in his movie. In City Hunter (1992), there is one scene where Chan
fights against two big and tall black guys in a dark movie theater. Although it is an
empty theater, Lee’s posthumous 1978 film Game of Death is playing. Paralleling the
situation where Chan is confronting these two black men, the film plays the scene

196
David Bordwell, Planet Hong Kong: Popular Cinema and the Art of Entertainment (Cambridge,
Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2000), 55.
197
Ibid., 58.
198
Steve Fore, “Life Imitates Entertainment: Home and Dislocation in the Films of Jackie Chan” in At
Full Speed:Hong Kong Cinema in a Borderless World. ed. Esther C.M.Yau (Minneapolis: Minnesota
University Press, 2001), 132.
118
where Lee fights with Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, the 7 foot 2 inch tall African American
basketball player. As Game of Death highlights the physical difference between Lee
and Abdul-Jabbar City Hunter also emphasizes Chan’s physical size compared to the
black men. When Chan is about to lose the fight he gets an idea from Lee’s move
against Abdul-Jabbar on screen. By imitating Lee, Chan finally beats the black men.
In the delight of victory, Chan talks to Lee on the screen, “You’re real good.” Lee says
back “You, too.”
This comic scene has dual meaning. On the one hand, it is Chan’s homage to
Lee. Lee is the action hero Chan wants to follow. At the same time, Chan puts himself
in an equivalent or higher position than Lee by showing that he can defeat two black
fighters, not just one. With the imaginary scene where Lee speaks back to him to
recognize Chan’s skills, Chan demonstrates that he is the right successor to Lee’s kung
fu fame. On the other hand, the scene highlights how Chan is different from Lee in
terms of action style and character. Chan imitates Lee, but his action demonstrates his
flexibility by adapting Lee’s techniques in a comical way. In a sense, Chan’s kung fu
is one step ahead. The scene also contrasts their character differences. While Lee
seems a furious and serious fighter, Chan appears to be just a regular guy who easily
gets scared when threatened by strong men. At one point, Chan begs the black men to
save him, saying, “I’m just a little guy.” Also, Chan frequently gets beaten by them in
119
his other films. As Bordwell puts it, “If Bruce Lee is a flagrant narcissist; Jackie Chan
is a passionate masochist.”
199

Nationalism vs. Cosmopolitanism
Both Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan achieved the dream of becoming a global star,
but their approaches were significantly different. Lee emphasized his Chinese-ness,
becoming a symbol of nationalism. Lee used foreign settings and foreign actors to deal
with the difficulties of Chinese people scattered throughout the Asia, and to express
Chinese nationalism. As Stephen Teo points out, “The case of Bruce Lee is of
particular interest because his international appeal does not appear to contradict his
forthright insistence on his Chinese-ness.”
200
Even his anti-Western sentiments did not
bother Western viewers. Rather, such anti-Western and anti-colonialist sentiments
went along with the political movements of the times, as I discussed in Chapter Two.
However, Chan’s case was different. Reflecting his brief experience in Australia,
Chan’s films often deal with Chinese immigrants in foreign settings. However, rather
than focusing on the difficulties of their lives, Chan uses the foreign settings to remove
Chinese cultural specificity and make the films more marketable to international
audiences. Steve Fore argues that over the past two decades, as the geographical and
marketing radius of Chan’s films has expanded, the cultural meanings attached to

199
Bordwell, 58.
200
Teo, 113.
120
Chan’s persona have become progressively more disembedded, lifted, out of Hong
Kong cultural specificity.
201

Since the 1980s, Jackie Chan has utilized many strategies to pursue
“cosmopolitanism.”
202
First, he modernized the kung fu genre. Before Chan, kung fu
films were mostly period dramas set in ancient or pre-modern societies. He launched
his career in those historical films, such as Snake in Eagle’s Shadow (1978) and
Drunken Master (1978). However, Chan changed the setting to contemporary society
to appeal to modern tastes. He created new kung fu subgenres by combining kung fu
with other genres, such as cop drama (Police Story), spy thriller (First Strike, Mr.Nice
Guy, Who Am I?), adventure film (Project A, Armour of God), and even manga (City
Hunter).
Second, as the background was shifted to a modern setting, Chan began to
make his action less martial arts-oriented and more Hollywood-action-like. While
Bruce Lee’s films had shabby production quality Chan’s films have meticulous scenes
of car chases, explosions, gun shootings, stunts in helicopters, trucks, trains, and
airplanes that are on a par with Hollywood standards. Since Chan performs dangerous
stunts without double or digital trickery, these scenes, despite their Hollywood look,
have the authenticity of “Jackie Chan action” that cannot be matched by Hollywood
C.G.I. For example, Police Story IV: First Strike (1996) presents a snowboard chase
scene in which Chan slides down a mountain slope, jumps off a cliff, grabs onto a

201
Fore, 117.
202
Bordwell, 58
121
helicopter, and falls through the ice into a frozen pond. Many Hollywood action
movies have similar scenes but they lack authenticity.
Jackie Chan has established his fame as “human special effects” by performing
all dangerous, death-defying stunts without body doubles. He could have died many
times – he was almost electrocuted, suffered from hyperthermia, broke nearly every
bone in his body, and underwent many surgeries. The “proud” injury list goes on and
on. Variety published a picture of Chan with the details of his injuries, saying, “Before
the age of CGI, stuntman-turned-actor Jackie Chan fought to make his action scenes
look realistic by putting himself in harm’s way. The following is a chop-by-chop list
of the maestro’s injuries.”
203
Such authenticity and passion for filmmaking has amazed
his fans and differentiated Chan from all action stars. Chan proudly says, “My body is
my special effects.” In fact, one of the pleasures in watching Chan’s films is to see
outtakes alongside the closing credits that feature his stunt mistakes and real injuries.
Mark Gallagher claims that this extra-narrative material contributes significantly to his
star persona. It supplies visual proof to Chan’s proud assertions of risk-taking in the
service of realism.
204
Steven Fore calls it “reflexive cinema verité.”
205

Finally, Jackie Chan shot his films all around the globe, cast foreigners, and
even shot in English to give his movies an international look and make them more
accessible to foreign markets. Wheels on Meals (1984) was shot in Barcelona, Spain,

203
Variety, Dec 3, 2001 v385 i3 pA1(2)
204
Mark Gallagher, Action Figures: Men, Action Films and Contemporary Adventure Narratives. (New
York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), 190.
205
Fore, 132.
122
and starred foreign actors such as former Miss Spain Lola Forner, American
kickboxing champion, Benny “The Jet” Urquidez, and karate champion Keith Vitali.
Armor of God (1986) featured all Western actors except the three major characters
played by Chan, Alan Tam, and Rosamund Kwan. Riffing off of Steven Spielberg’s
Raiders of the Lost Ark, the film was shot in Africa, France and Yugoslavia. Who Am I
(1999) is set in Africa and Holland, and is entirely shot in English for foreign markets.
Chan claims that this movie was a big success, even beating out Titanic in some Asian
countries. As he puts it, “I guess Jackie Chan can stop a $200 million juggernaut as
well as any iceberg.”
206

Such negation of Chinese-ness and pursuit of cosmopolitanism in Chan’s films
can be seen as an attempt to keep up with changes in Hong Kong and Chinese
communities as well as international film markets at large. Certainly, the historical and
cultural setting where Chan is located at the present is different from that of Bruce
Lee’s times. As Steve Fore puts it, “Bruce Lee died on the cusp of what has been
revealed to be a major (though still incomplete) transformation and reorganization of
economic, political, and cultural conditions all over the world.”
207
However, to
paraphrase Fore, Chan is standing right now at the heart of a major transformation and
reorganization of economic, political, and cultural conditions all over the world,
including Chinese societies as well as Asia and the globe.

206
Chan, 356.
207
Fore, 122.
123
Steve Fore notes that the emergence of Chan’s kung fu comedy coincided with
the emergence of modern urbanism.
208
It was the time when Hong Kong transformed
from a colonial backwater to a rapidly modernizing and fast-paced urban capitalist
society. The young and new urban audiences who are less connected to Chinese
tradition or to China itself had more interest in Chan’s kung fu comedy set in modern
times than in traditional martial arts films. Moreover, while the Chinese diasporic fans
of Bruce Lee were mostly emigrants from the mainland who still missed their mother
culture, the contemporary Chinese diaspora audiences of Jackie Chan are the 2
nd
and
3
rd
generation who do not have strong attachments to the mother culture. Having the
same tastes as other global audiences, Chinese audiences would prefer Hollywood
movies, which have better production values than Hong Kong films. This means that
Chinese markets are no longer secure markets for Hong Kong cinema. Chan has coped
with such changes by pursuing cosmopolitanism and making Hollywood look alike
international Hong Kong action films without too much emphasis on Chinese-ness.
Jackie Chan is a pioneer of the Hollywoodization of Asian films, which has
become a new trend today. Christina Klein argues that many contemporary Asian
filmmakers believe that they could win their viewers back from Hollywood if they
made films with Hollywood standard production values. She further claims that as a
tactic, they borrow Hollywood’s visual elements and narrative styles.
209
Chan must

208
Ibid., 125-6.
209
Christian Klein, “Martial Arts and the Globalization of US and Asian Film Industries,” in
Comparative American Studies. 2 (3).

124
have foreseen this trend earlier than other Asian filmmakers thanks to his failure in
launching his career in Hollywood during the 1980s. In the following, I will discuss
how his experience in Hollywood helped him open his eyes to globalizing Hong Kong
cinema and reinventing himself as a transnational action star.

Lessons in Hollywood
In 1979, Jackie Chan got offered a one million Hong Kong dollar contract
from Golden Harvest. As Wade Major puts it, “The paring of Jackie Chan and Golden
Harvest was a marriage made in movie making heaven. Raymond Chow again had
Hong Kong’s preeminent action star, and Jackie Chan had virtually unlimited access
to Chow’s deep pockets. Best of all, Chow had U.S. connections.”
210
Raymond Chow
wanted to launch Chan’s career in U.S. markets. He planned to co-produce a martial
arts film with Warner Brothers once again. The Enter the Dragon (1973) team –
director Robert Clouse and producer Fred Weintraub – joined the team. Battle Creek
Brawl (a.k.a. The Big Brawl, 1980), Chan’s American debut film, was born from that
collaboration and was expected to repeat the Bruce Lee legend. The filmmakers chose
a setting similar to that of Enter the Dragon, a martial arts contest. This narrative
device was designed for Chan to display his skills, as it did for Bruce Lee. However,
the film failed. Chan believes it was because he did not have control over the stunt
design. “I’d been choreographing fights in Hong Kong for almost ten years, and now

210
Wade Major, Jackie Chan (New York: Metro Books, 1999), 41.
125
they were telling me what to do!”
211
The American method of shooting action
sequences based on planned scripts without improvisation did not work for him. In
addition, Chan’s limited English skills did not help his acting, and his star power in
the U.S. was too weak. The publicity and promotions did not turn out well since the
press did not know who he was, and his action style was confused with karate.
Chan continued his adventure with another co-production, Cannonball Run
(1981), but this was even more disastrous for him. The film was a hit, making $100
million worldwide, partly because of star casting with Burt Reynolds and Roger
Moore. However, in this film, Chan plays a very small and a ridiculous role – a
Japanese top car racer who speaks Chinese. Chan himself calls it “silly and
shameful.”
212
Disappointed and angry, Chan came back to Hong Kong and poured his
energy into Hong Kong films. With Sammo Hung and Yuen Biao, his classmates at
the China Drama Academy, he bounced back with a series of successful films such as
Winners and Sinners (1983), Project A (1984), and Wheels on Meals (1984). Project A
was a huge hit, making HK $ 14 million in its first week and HK $ 40 million in total.
Encouraged by such success, Golden Harvest urged Chan to consider another
Hollywood project. This time, Chan played a hard-boiled New York cop, Billy Wong.
Yet the film The Protector (1985), turned out to be “one more disastrous attempt to
break into Hollywood.”
213
It is known that the director, James Glickenhaus, and Chan
did not get along. According to Chan, “he didn’t let me fight in a way that showed my

211
Chan, 337.
212
Ibid., 337.
213
Ibid., 342.
126
skills; he tried to make me act like Dirty Harry (Clint Eastwood), speaking softly and
carrying a big gun.”
214
Fighting with guns, rather than bare hands, the film failed to
showcase Chan’s genuine talents in martial arts. There was no point casting Chan for
such a role. Disliking American style choreography and editing, Chan re-shot the
action sequences and added new, light fighting footage, for the Asian release. Chan’s
version showed his charm and did well in Hong Kong.
When Chan’s efforts to learn English and struggle to break through in
Hollywood failed, he was heartbroken and disappointed. In a recently released DVD
of Battle Creek Brawl, Chan recalls how the painful experiences taught him a lesson.
They wanted to change me. Changed my action, my attitude, my
character. It’s not Jackie Chan anymore. They wanted to use Jackie
Chan thing. But they didn’t listen to me. Nobody knows me. The
director didn’t know me. Who Jackie Chan? There are so many rules
that you cannot cross. It’s wrong script. How can I be ABC – American
born Chinese? I spoke terrible English that time. But without Brawl, I
won’t have today. American audiences destroyed my confidence. Why
they didn’t like this kind of action? Why they didn’t like this kind of
comedy? I stayed two years in America. For two years! Forget America
back to Hong Kong. I do my own thing. Fifteen years later. They like
it. Battle Creek Brawl was the first step. It changed me a lot. It made
me humble. In America I’m not big star any more. Nobody knows me.
Jackie who? Oh, you’re not Bruce Lee. From Japan? No, Hong Kong.
American audiences destroyed my confidence. Back to Hong Kong I
worked hard.
215

Chan’s experience in Hollywood, however, was not in vain. It opened his eyes
to the importance of Asian markets, and he poured his energy into improving the
production values of Hong Kong cinema. This resulted in Chan’s cosmopolitanism

214
Ibid., 342.
215
An interview in the DVD of Battle Creek Brawl (2004)
127
that I discussed above. His efforts paid off. As Andy Klein states, “A strange thing
happened next: now that Chan had forgotten about America, America started to notice
him.”
216
Even Chan’s limited English does not matter anymore. Chan proudly said, “I
could speak my English. Didn’t have to perfect English. I almost can control all action
sequences. They respect me. Not Jackie who? They already know me. It changed now.
We crossed already.”
217

As Jackie Chan’s fame grew in Asia, Hollywood stars such as Michael
Douglas, Sylvester Stallone, and Wesley Snipes offered him the chance to work with
them. However, Chan did not like their scripts or the Asian villain characters they
suggested. He knew that his persona was a “nice guy,” and that is what his fans
wanted.
Rather than wait for the right script to come across his desk, Chan decided to
return to Hollywood with his own movie. With American markets in mind, Rumble in
the Bronx (1996) chose its setting as the Bronx, New York, and employed many
foreign actors to play American gangsters. Rumble in the Bronx (1996) became Chan’s
breakthrough in the U.S., grossing $32.2 million. Unlike other Hong Kong films,
which usually played only in art house theaters or Chinese neighborhood theaters,
Rumble received widespread distribution – 1,736 North American screens. It became
“the first Hong Kong film ever to make it to number one at the U.S. box office.”
218

216
Andy Klein, “From Hong Kong to Hollywood…And Back Again: Jackie Chan and America,” in Out
of the Shadows: Asian in American Cinema, ed. Roger Garcia (Olivares, 2001), 98.
217
An interview in the DVD of Battle Creek Brawl (2004)
218
Chan, 313.
128
Such spectacular success partly owed to New Line Cinema’s massive and clever
media campaign: in addition to television advertisements with the headline “No Fear,
No Stuntman, No Equal,” Chan appeared on numerous magazines, newspapers, and
television talk shows, including the Jay Leno and David Letterman shows. Chan was
timely awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award at the MTV Movie Awards and
chosen to be a presenter at the Academy Awards that year.

Jackie Chan vs. American Action Heroes
Since Rumble in the Bronx is not an American production but a Hong Kong
production set in America, the film well demonstrated Chan’s talents in action
choreography as well as his charming character, distinguishable from his Hollywood
counterparts. Mark Gallagher compares the differences between Chan and Hollywood
action stars in terms of generic characteristics, star persona and masculinity.
219
He
argues that Chan revamps the Western action-hero persona by combining exceptional
acrobatic skills, self-deprecating wit, psychological and physical vulnerability and
comic sense. In Hollywood action, comic elements are often decorative, thus graphic
violence becomes the main attraction. However, Chan’s action successfully blends
comedy and action (comic violence), thus constructing his persona as feminized,
vulnerable, comic, and friendly. This contrasts with Hollywood’s action heroes, who
idealize bare, muscular bodies as symbols of masculinity. Gallagher sees Chan’s

219
Mark Gallagher, Action Figures: Men, Action Films and Contemporary Adventure Narratives. (New
York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), 159-192.
129
burlesque body as an implicit critique on the hardness and rigidity characteristic of the
Western action hero, thus allowing him to exhibit “alternative modes of male heroism,
modes scarcely evident in U.S. popular culture.”
220
Chan’s comic character can be best
exemplified by one funny episode in Hollywood. Thanks to the success of Rumble in
the Bronx, Chan earned a chance to make handprints in the sidewalk at Mann’s
Chinese Theater in Los Angeles on January 5, 1997. Excited to become a member of
the Star Row, Chan printed his nose into the cement as well as his hands, feet, and
signature. His image as a friendly comic action star is cemented that way forever.
Albeit different from contemporary American action stars, Chan is often
compared to Hollywood’s silent slapstick comedians such as Buster Keaton and
Harold Lloyd. In fact, Chan has copied many ideas from their films. The famous clock
tower jump in Project A (1984) is an homage to Harold Lloyd’s Safety Last (1923).
The last scene of its sequel, Project A Part 2 (1987), where the ceremonial wall falls
down on Chan but he survives by passing through the paper window is an imitation of
Buster Keaton’s falling-house stunt from Steamboat Bill, Jr.(1928).
Furthermore, because of Chan’s dance-like action, he is often compared to
Hollywood dancing stars such as Fred Astaire. Aaron D. Anderson points out that
Chan’s choreography has “intentional rhythm” that separates it from actual physical
violence; especially his ability to use empty space and objects makes his action close
to danced spectacles or art.

220
Ibid., 160.
130
Part of the pleasure of viewing [of Jackie Chan’s films] is clearly the
sheer spectacle of watching Jackie Chan’s body move through and
interact with space. According to models of dance analysis, this
spectacle of a body moving through space has value in and of itself.
The fundamental aesthetic of Jackie Chan’s choreography and
movement performance is his unique artistic use of space. In addition
to his own agility, a large part of his films’ appeal has to do with his
ability to transform otherwise apparently everyday objects into
weapons, movement props, and obstacles around which to fight,
defend, and perform….Thus Chan’s use of space becomes almost a
partnership with the environment, or, as novelist Donald E. Westlake
puts it, ‘Jackie Chan is Fred Astaire, and the world is Ginger
Rogers.’
221

Chan’s design of dance-like comic action also comes from his awareness that
“so many children see my movies. All my action films have lots of fighting but no
blood.”
222
This helped Chan build a franchise beyond the film industry. Chan’s image
as a friendly and harmless action star let him penetrate the youth market, from
animation to various merchandise. Jackie Chan Adventures (2000-2005) was a
successful American children’s animated television series which chronicled the
adventures of fictional Jackie Chan as a kid. The series ran on Kid’s Warner Brothers
and the Cartoon Network for five years (from September 9, 2000 to July 8, 2005), for
a total of 5 seasons and 95 episodes. In addition, Chan has been a popular action figure
and source of video games. Chan runs the “JC store” at his official website
www.jackiechan.com. Merchandise such as T-shirts, caps, pants, key chains, bags,
jewelry, watches, and stationery prove his popularity among children in Asia and the
U.S.

221
Aaron Anderson, “Asian Martial Arts Cinema, Dance, and the Cultural Languages of Gender,” Asian
Journal of Communication 11 no.2 (2001): 61-62.
222
Time International, October 19, 1998: 52.
131
The Hollywoodization of Jackie Chan
Since the success of Rumble in the Bronx, Chan has starred in major
Hollywood studio films that were released in mainstream multiplexes, reaching wide
audiences across age, class, gender and race. The 2006 Super Bowl commercial by
Diet Pepsi features Chan making an action film called “kung fu can” with a Diet Pepsi
can. This comic commercial is a rare example of seeing an Asian man at the heart of
American consumerism.
However, Chan’s presence in mainstream American culture has not always
been celebrated. There have been many debates about his roles in Hollywood films.
As I discussed in Chapter 3, Bruce Lee’s kung fu craze is clearly associated with the
anti-colonial movements, anti-Vietnam War movements, and racial politics of the
1960s and 1970s. Kung fu became a site of expressing political ideas and uniting
repressed people of color. For that reason, Bruce Lee has been celebrated as a hero of
the working class and racial minorities. An academic paper titled “Learning from
Bruce Lee” exemplifies how Lee is considered a celebratory rebel figure even in
academia. In this paper, Meaghan Morris asserts that:
Lee is first and foremost an iconic film teacher. In a mythology still
being elaborated by countless martial arts magazines and by “secrets of
Jeet Kune Do” videos and books, Lee figures as both a great martial
arts teacher who struggled against adversity to become a great film star
and an exemplary martial artist who used film as a pedagogical medium
– on both scores, inspiring others to do likewise.
223

223
Meaghan Morris, “Learning from Bruce Lee: Pedagogy and Political Correctness in Marital Arts
Cinema,” in Keyframes: Popular Culture and Cultural Studies, ed. Matthew Tinkcom and Amy
Villarejo (New York: Routledge, 2001), 178.
132
On the contrary, Chan has been criticized for “the Hollywoodization of Jackie
Chan” by scholars, especially Hong Kong scholars. Christina Klein notes the nature of
the Hollywoodization of Jackie Chan: “Chan’s studio-made films insert him into
familiar Hollywood genres, give him a loquacious native-English speaking partner to
carry the dialogue scenes, curtail his tendency towards non-stop action, and de-
emphasize his acrobatic martial arts skill in favor of less physically challenging forms
of action.”
224
However, regardless of scholarly criticism, the Hollywoodization or
Americanization of Jackie Chan is inevitable. In the following, I will discuss the
background and elements of Chan’s Hollywoodization, and how they have been
criticized by scholars.

American Buddy Action-Cop Genre
Hollywood put Chan into an American genre convention – the buddy action-
cop genre. As in other genre films like 48 Hours (1982), Red Heat (1988), and Lethal
Weapon, Chan is paired with someone – either a white or black character, in
Hollywood films. From the studio’s point of view, it may be more reasonable and safe
to pair Chan with another marketable American actor than to give him as a solo
leading role. Given that Chan’s English is not good enough to carry the whole running
time pairing him with a native English speaker would be a wiser choice.

224
Christian Klein, “Martial Arts and the Globalization of US and Asian Film Industries,” in
Comparative American Studies 2 no.3: 364-5.
133
However, it is difficult to deny that there is still cultural resistance among
American mainstream moviegoers to seeing an Asian leading man on screen.
Although Hollywood has propagated its multicultural turn by making films and
television dramas with racially diverse casting, still there have been very few films
with Asian leading roles since Enter the Dragon (1972). Even Bruce Lee himself
predicted that there would be no Asian star after him for at least another ten years.
225

The reality was harsher than he thought. It took almost 25 years for Jackie Chan to
revive an Asian presence in Hollywood with Rumble in the Bronx. The film was a big
hit, but it is important to note that it was dubbed in English, reedited, shortened, and
re-scored to appeal to American audiences. Steven Fore notes that for the U.S.
promotion of Rumble in the Bronx, Chan was positioned as a “performer” rather than a
“star” by mainly focusing on his athleticism and stunts. According to Fore, a key
aspect of Chan’s popular appeal in Asia was his star persona as Chinese – the
character’s respect for the value of a group orientation, altruism, and humility. But this
was erased in the American promotion. His Chinese-ness was obscured because the
U.S. distributor still perceived a high level of resistance among mainstream American
movie audiences to foreign films and cultural otherness in general.
226
From that
perspective, it can be said that Chan has to be squeezed into a familiar American

225
John Hardie, “The Man with a Stomach Like a Brick Wall,” The Hong Kong Star, November 1971,
Reprinted in John Little, 108.
226
Steve Fore, “Jackie Chan and the Cultural Dynamics of Global Entertainment” in Transnational
Chinese Cinemas: Identity, Nationhood, Gender, ed. Sheldon Hsiao-peng Lu (Honolulu: University of
Hawai’i Press, 1997), 256.
134
buddy genre format to avoid cultural resistance among American moviegoers who do
not want to see an Asian star in charge all alone.
In the audio commentary for Rush Hour, director Brett Ratner admits that Rush
Hour is not a typical martial arts movie. Rather, it is an “American buddy picture.” He
tells how he persuaded Chan to do the role, saying, “In order to succeed in America
you have to do a movie – a typical American film.”
227
Chan accepted the offer and
here was born a typical yet unusual American buddy action film with Asian and black
leads. With its advertisement headline, “The fastest hands in the East vs. The biggest
mouth in the West,” Rush Hour faithfully repeated the buddy genre convention by
presenting mismatched characters. At the same time, the unique Asian-black match
added a new flavor to the genre, and American audiences liked it.
In “Bullets, Buddies, and Bad Guys: The Action-cop Genre,” Jeffrey A. Brown
offers insightful analysis of the action buddy genre in terms of generic conventions
and ideologies.
228
First, he notes that one of the genre’s conventions is “mismatched
heroes.”
229
The partnership is usually unwanted by both sides because they are too
antithetical. The Rush Hour series faithfully repeats such genre conventions. In the
beginning of Rush Hour 1, the film sets up James Carter (Christ Tucker) as a loner –
the only cop who doesn’t have a partner in LAPD. He is assigned by the FBI to baby-
sit the Hong Kong cop Inspector Lee (Jackie Chan). Neither Carter nor Lee wants the

227
The DVD of Rush Hour (1998)
228
Jeffrey A. Brown, “Bullets, Buddies, and Bad Guys: The Action-cop Genre,” Journal of Popular
Film and Television 21. no.2 (summer 1993): 79-87.
229
Ibid., 80.
135
partnership but they have to work together for their own purposes: for Lee, to save
Chinese Consul Han’s daughter, Soo Yang. For Carter, working with the FBI is his
dream and he wants to prove that he is capable of working with them.
Second, Brown points out that the action buddy genre contrasts characters’
racial and cultural differences. The fun of the Rush Hour series comes from the clash
between two characters based on their cultural, racial and language differences. Carter
and Lee often say to each other, “You’ll never understand me.” Not to mention their
different tastes in music and food, they do not understand each other’s racial culture.
Their joke “what’s up, my nigger,” highlights Lee’s status as a naïve foreigner who is
ignorant about American racial culture. The communication problem is more serious
than in other American buddy films since they literally speak two different languages.
In the very beginning of Rush Hour, quickly assuming that Lee cannot speak English,
Carter shouts at him, “Do you understand the words that are coming out of my
mouth?” However, it turns out Lee can speak modest English. Furthermore, their
specialties and personalities are strikingly opposite. Lee has superb acrobatic skills
such as jumps, flops, runs, and falls, but he is a typical modest and honor-oriented
Asian man. On the contrary, Carter is clumsy in combat and cunning enough to
sheepishly avoid a fight. Rather, Carter fights with his mouth. He is a streetwise, trash-
talking, fast-talking braggart.
Finally, Brown points out that the action buddy genre ends with two characters
overcoming their differences and building interracial male bonding. Rush Hour is no
136
exception. While Carter and Lee’s differences are striking, they eventually grow
accustomed to each other and begin to build a strong brotherhood. A famous scene in
Rush Hour is when they sing and dance together with the song “War.” The scene
implies that they have begun to have good chemistry in spite of all differences. In the
scene, Lee teaches Carter how to steal the gun from an opponent’s hands while Carter
teaches Lee how to say “yo” correctly. As the series continues, their interracial male
bonding becomes stronger. Rush Hour 2 ends with Lee giving his father’s police
badge to Carter as a token of friendship. In Rush Hour 3, they argue how much they
have become like each other. Carter insists that he has learned kung fu and Chinese
while Lee claims he has become black. In particular, the scene with the background
music of Elton John’s “Sorry seems to be the hardest word” highlights their
assimilation. The scene crosscuts between Carter going to a Chinese restaurant for
take-out and Lee eating chicken fries, Carter’s favorite food, in a hotel room. After a
quarrel, they seek each other’s favorite food. In fact, their male bonding exists in real
life as well. There is an interesting moment in the outtakes of Rush Hour 3: Chan
repeats the line, “We’re not brothers.” Carter responds humorously, “You’re saying
we’re not brothers? After everything we’ve been through? Rush Hour 1, Rush Hour
2?” Everybody laughs on the set. Ironically, this extra-narrative material further
emphasizes their interracial male bonding in the film narrative.
However, such interracial reconciliation and male bonding are ideologically
problematic, as Jeffrey A. Brown elaborates.
137
Most action cop films downplay the obvious racial differences by
emphasizing the personality clash between the characters rather than
the clash of ethnicities that the characters represent…These films fulfill
their mythic function by symbolically uniting heroes who have been
characterized as representing the conflicting diversities that exist in
America. As a nation torn by dichotomies, America must continually
struggle to reaffirm its self-image. …The fundamental American
ideologies of rugged individualism and communal responsibility are
naturally resolved in the action-cop genre through its emphasis on the
inevitable victory of good over evil when disparate individuals learn to
work as a team. Action-cop movies also resolve reality and ideology by
demonstrating the characters’ ability to understand the “other,”
vicariously substantiating the ideology pf racial harmony that is
fundamental to the self-image of America as a utopian nation, despite
the undeniable existence of racial and class tensions.
230

From this point of view, the theme of interracial bonding in the Rush Hour
series can be problematic. It promotes the ideology of racial harmony: that the
differing Asian and black cultures can harmonize in American society because
American society is close to a utopian society. It further falsely promotes
multiculturalism, which American society pretends to be based on. Multiculturalism
advocates that many different cultures can coexist with equal status and mutual respect.
With the theme of “East meets Black,” Rush Hour promotes this idea that
multiculturalism exists in American society. In fact, Chan’s very presence in
Hollywood can give a false impression that Hollywood is racially inclusive and that
multiculturalism works within its system. Minh-ha T. Pham discusses why this is
problematic.

230
Ibid., 83-4.
138
Unlike prior renditions of the Asian invasion, Hollywood is not
threatened by the increased presence of Asian and Asian American
actors and filmmakers; instead, the so-called Asian invasion enhances
Hollywood’s image as a racially inclusive, equal opportunity, global
industry. Moreover, Asian actors and filmmakers are not invading
Hollywood as much as they are finally being admitted into Hollywood
– under very specific conditions and for very specific roles. Despite the
increased presence of Asian actors in Hollywood, the struggle for
equitable and fair Asian American representation in Hollywood has not
ended.
231

As she points out, it is important to note that the presence of Chan and other
Asian actors does not imply that they have an opportunity to fairly represent their
people and culture. They are often pigeonholed to play limited roles. In the case of
Chan, his visibility is permitted when he plays “a buddy” to either a white or black
character. The problem is that within this coupling, Chan comes to play a stereotypical
Asian male.

The Representation of Asian Masculinity
It is ironic that while the theme of Rush Hour is reconciliation between two
different cultures and races, it reproduces the racial stereotypes. It presents Carter as a
hypersexual black womanizer vs. Lee as a feminized asexual Asian, which is a typical
assumption about black and Asian masculinities. Throughout the Rush Hour series,
Chan’s physical deficiency as a short and weak male is highlighted. In Rush Hour 2,
Carter and Lee debate who won the glamorous agent Isabella’s attention. Lee says
“Women like me. They think I’m cute. Like Snoopy.” Tucker responds, “Snoopy is 6

231
Minh-ha T. Pham, “The Asian Invasion (of Multiculturalism) in Hollywood,” Journal of Popular
Film and Television 32 no.3 (fall 2004): 122.
139
inches taller than you.” Nobody would consider Snoopy as sexually potent. In fact,
height can signify the size of the male penis, the symbol of male potency. Although
Lee gets a kiss from Isabelle at the end of Rush Hour 2, and the sequel implies that
they were in relationship, Chan never gets a bed scene with any women throughout the
series. In Rush Hour 3, Carter thinks Chan is having sex with a Chinese woman in a
room, but actually they are fighting. On the contrary, Carter has a bed scene with a
beautiful woman and always jokes about sex. He is portrayed as a stereotypical black
male – talkative and hypersexual.
The representation of Chan as an asexual Asian is quite different from his early
Hollywood and Hong Kong films. In Battle Creek Brawl (1980), Chan’s character has
a white girlfriend. He kisses her on her breast and sexual intercourse is implied in the
narrative. Rumble in the Bronx emphasizes Chan’s muscular body. Throughout the
film, Chan wears short shirts or goes shirtless, thus showing his naked muscular upper
body, a symbol of his masculinity. There is a mirror scene in the supermarket where
Chan displays his muscle in the contest pose, without knowing that the people on the
other side of the mirror can see him. The female character played by Annita Mui
obviously becomes fascinated by Chan’s body. However, his contemporary
Hollywood films hardly pose him as an erotic or sexual male, nor does he get any
attention from white women.
Hong Kong scholar Kwai-Cheung Lo argues that Chan’s Inspector Lee is
nothing but “Charlie Chan” – Hollywood’s long-lasting superficial stock character of
140
Asian men as the feminized and castrated detective. Lo focuses on how Chan’s
physical look and stunts have changed after his crossover to Hollywood.
Chan’s acrobatic skills and well-choreographed action with
cinematographic enlargement are preserved in the Hollywood
production, while his death-defying spectacular stunts have been
largely toned-down. The Hollywood portrayal of Chan is relatively low
keyed and unglamorous – he combs back his hair and wears Western
suits – and conforms to an ordinary, bourgeois, middle-aged look, in
contrast to the boyish Beatles haircut and casual outfits he wears in his
Hong Kong films and that emphasize his agility, dynamism, and
vitality. Not unlike Charlie Chan, Jackie Chan in Hollywood is tied to a
body that has a limited sense of becoming-other and is dressed up like a
comedian demonstrating cartoonlike kung fu, which remains legible but
bears less of an emotional impact. The tradition of Hong Kong action
filmmaking is appropriated to meet Hollywood’s realistic style and its
racial conventions.
232

Lo further situates Chan in a larger context of the onscreen images of Hong
Kong actors in Hollywood productions. He argues that their characterizations mostly
rely on American presuppositions of “what Asians should be like” as opposed to the
specific symbolic values offered by the individual actors. That is why most of them
play mainland Chinese whose ethnicity appears static and monolithic.
Hong Kong actors and actresses in these Hollywood productions have
to prove themselves more Chinese than the mainland Chinese they
portray. ….The Chineseness in these films is converted into a given
that can hardly be modified and vigorously reshaped, in comparison to
the modifications available in Hong Kong’s local productions. Since
Chineseness serves as a static ethnicity that American society assigns to
the other in order to consolidate its dominant self, the malleability of
Hong Kong subjectivity is therefore foreclosed.
233

232
Kwai-Cheung Lo, Chinese Face/Off: The Transnational Popular Culture of Hong Kong (Hong
Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2005), 142-3.
233
Ibid., 134.
141
Therefore, Lo argues that, in the case of Chan, his Chinese character in Rush
Hour appears estranged and weird to Hong Kong audiences.
234
Hong Kong people
could neither understand the racial jokes such as “What’s up, my nigger,” nor identify
with Inspector Lee in spite of the fact that he seems very Chinese. Lo concludes the
film was received in Hong Kong as an American film made for American taste.
235

However, another Chinese scholar, Yuan Shu, presents different views about
Chan’s projection of Chinese masculinity in his Hollywood films. In “Reading the
Kung Fu Film in an American context: From Bruce Lee to Jackie Chan,”
236
Shu
argues that Chan not only challenges the Orientalist construction of the Asian male
body as being “soft” but also deconstructs the hard body of American action cinema as
both a fantasy and an illusion. He compares Chan with Bruce Lee. According to him,
Lee’s kung fu tragedy remasculinized the so-called “soft” Asian male body as tough,
aggressive, and competitive, and addressed racial politics and Chinese nationalism. In
contrast, Chan’s kung fu comedies tone down Lee’s politics and aggressive Asian
masculinity by humanizing the hero. However, that does not necessarily indicate a
retreat to an Asian “soft” body, a lack of masculinity, or an inability to fight.
It would be wrong to assume that Jackie Chan deconstructs Lee’s hard
body and tough guy image without considering the issue of Asian and
Asian American masculinity. As a matter of fact, Chan devises his own
way of carrying on Lee’s tradition and redefining Asian masculinity.
Both as a strategy to market himself and a gesture to compete with the
hard bodies of Hollywood, Chan has constantly exposed himself to the

234
Ibid., 135.
235
Ibid., 139.
236
Yuan Shu, “Reading the Kung Fu Film in an American Context: From Bruce Lee to Jackie Chan –
Critical Essay,” Journal of Popular Film and Television 31 no.2 (Summer 2003): 50-9.
142
media on the both sides of the Pacific and highlighted the fact that he
always does his own stunts and uses his own body, not special effects,
as a means of attracting his audiences. Chan creates two personas here.
On the one hand, there is the “soft” Chan on screen, who runs away
from trouble, gets hurt easily in escape, and wins the fight purely by
luck. On the other hand, there is the real “tough” Chan off screen, who
defies death by jumping from one skyscraper to another or by dangling
under a helicopter. All the escaping episodes and fighting sequences in
which Chan has really risked his own life constitute an important part
of his strategy in reinventing himself and reconstructing masculinity.
237
In other words, since the audiences know that Chan’s stunts are real and he
risks his own life in doing those stunts, Yuan Shu argues that Chan portrays
masculinity in more realistic terms than Bruce Lee or his American action
counterparts. Thus, Chan pushes Lee’s body politic in an opposite direction, but he
achieves Lee’s effect just the same.
The strikingly different reading of Chan’s masculinity between two scholars
comes from their opposite perspectives about Chan’s general role in global Hollywood.
Yuan Shu sees Chan “challenging the problems and consequences of globalization as
much he benefits from its practice and influence.”
238
However, Kwai-Cheung Lo
focuses more on Chan’s limited role, which follows the existing American racial
politics in which Asians and Asian Americans are marginalized. Such a view
originates from Lo’s concern as a Hong Kong based film scholar whose film industry
has rapidly declined with the drain of Hong Kong talent into Hollywood. To him, the
crossover Hong Kong actors are nothing but “expatriates or migrant workers starting a

237
Ibid., 57.
238
Ibid., 51.
143
new life in a new host country. Their past reputations in Hong Kong or Asia, upon
which their cultural identity was built, become relatively negligible since they are now
workers looking for a new career in a different market.”
239

The Representation of China
Kwai-Cheung Lo’s pessimistic view about crossover Hong Kong actors tends
to ignore their agency. As I argued in Chapter Two, they can be seen as “flexible
citizens” who use their martial arts skills for the benefit of their individual careers and
success. However, it seems true that, as Lo argues, Jackie Chan is more Chinese in his
Hollywood films. Chan’s Hollywood films always emphasize his “Chinese” identity,
whether set in modern times (Rush Hour series, The Tuxedo) or in the old West
(Shanghai Noon and Shanghai Knights). Hollywood’s emphasis contrasts to the fact
that Chan’s Hong Kong films have attempted to remove Chinese-ness in a pursuit of
cosmopolitanism, as I discussed earlier. Moreover, the portrayal of China and
Chinese-ness in Chan’s Hollywood films seems to perpetuate the long-standing
American perception of China as the foreign and exotic Orient.
First, the Chinese-ness appears as foreign in Chan’s Hollywood films.
American scholar Mark Gallagher notes how Chan’s character is portrayed as a
misunderstood Asian foreign “traveler” and how the narrative unfolds around Chan’s

239
Lo, 132.
144
estrangement from the surrounding American culture in Rush Hour. He argues that it
accords with the familiar U.S. stereotype of the quizzical Asian tourist.
240

Second, the Chinese-ness is also portrayed as traditional and stubborn. The
Rush Hour series emphasizes how Chan follows the so-called Asian values – a code of
honor, tradition, and family obligation. As Mark Gallagher puts it, Chan’s Hollywood
character is always portrayed as a “staunch defender of Chinese cultural tradition.”
241

Unlike James Carter, whose police work has nothing to do with his personal life,
Inspector Lee’s mission is always related to his personal obligation to Asian values,
which makes him less professional. In Rush Hour 1, saving Consul Han’s daughter is
rather his personal duty because of his close relationship with Consul Han. Since
Consul Han is like his surrogate father he performs his job as a son rather than as a
policeman. In Rush Hour 2, the plot introduces Lee’s personal vengeance for his
father’s death. His father was a policeman but was killed by his partner Ricky Tan,
who has later become the notorious Triads leader. Catching Tan is Lee’s personal
obligation to revenge his father’s death. In Rush Hour 3, Inspector Lee confronts the
assassin of Consul Han, who turns out to be his sworn brother Kenji (Hiroyuki
Sanada). His personal pity for his brother makes Lee let him go, thus neglecting his
job. All these stories highlight Lee as a family- and honor-oriented Asian man.
Third, the representation of China in the Rush Hour series is based
Hollywood’s dual attitudes towards Asia – Asiaphobia and Asiaphilia. On the one

240
Mark Gallagher, “Rumble in the USA: Jackie Chan in Translation,” in Film Stars: Hollywood and
Beyond, ed. Andrew Willis (Manchester University Press, 2004), 123.
241
Ibid., 129.
145
hand, U.S. Chinatowns appear to be worlds of crime and mobs, as in the Foo Chow
Chinese restaurant in Rush Hour and Red Dragon Hotel in Rush Hour 2. If that is not
the case, Chinatown is represented as a mysterious and exotic place – Rush Hour 3
features a martial arts studio where a Yao Ming look-alike giant and an old master
with a ridiculously long mustache live. The portrayal of Chinatown as a home of
social ills or mystery has a long history in Hollywood representation. Since the silent
era, many films have portrayed Chinatown as a world of opium addicts, pimps, fallen
women, and Tong wars. These depictions originated from the era of the California
Gold Rush and Transcontinental railroad construction in the early 19
th
century. White
Americans feared that Chinese immigrant laborers would steal their jobs, so they
fabricated “the Yellow Peril,” the sentiment of Asiaphobia, which led to the Chinese
Exclusion Act of 1882. Such fear was reflected in Hollywood portrayals of Chinese.
Although the imaginary construction of Chinatown is a product of a particular
historical anxiety, Hollywood has been reproducing the yellow peril without any
historical contexts. Interestingly, even within representations of Asiaphobia white
superiority still dominates. Mark Gallagher points out that Rush Hour portrays white
evils as the head of Chinese criminal organization. It implies that white Europeans are
also corrupt but more importantly, they are still innately qualified to lead groups of
non-whites.
242

242
Gallargher, “Rumble,” 128.
146
On the other hand, the Rush Hour series features Asiaphilia – white America’s
love for exotic and foreign Asia. It portrays China as culturally rich and its cultural
heritage as precious. The display of Chinese artifacts and treasures at the Chinese
Expo in Rush Hour glorifies the 5,000 year old Chinese history. At the same time, it
exoticizes Asian culture. Its beauty is being displayed for the white person’s pleasure.
In Embracing the East: White Women and American Orientalism, Mari Yoshihara
articulates how Americans negotiate between fear of and love for Asia: “Americans
sought to deal with Asia in ways that allowed the U.S. to contain the threat of Asia and
Asians while fulfilling its exotic desire for the beauty of Asian cultures. ...Americans
carefully and skillfully detached Asian arts and artifacts from their historical and
cultural contexts, commodified them as objects, and confined them.”
243
Yoshihara’s
observation points out that Asiaphobia, not to mention Asiaphilia, is not benign.
Finally, exotic Chinese-ness is further reinforced on the Asian female body. In
the Rush Hour series an Asian female is either represented as a prostitute or a “Dragon
Lady,” which are popular stereotypes of Asian women in Hollywood representation.
In Rush Hour 2, Inspector Lee and James Carter go to a massage parlor in Hong Kong.
When the madam of the parlor opens the door many exotic Asian women are standing
there, giving them a sly leer, almost naked. They are ready to be picked up like
prostitutes. Carter shouts with joy, “I love Hong Kong!” Throughout the film, Carter
stresses that he is in Hong Kong for “vacation,” which implicitly includes a sexcursion.

243
Mari Yoshihara, Embracing the East: White Women and American Orientalism (New York: Oxford
University Press, 2003), 43.
147
If these women at the massage parlor are “the happy-go-lucky prostitutes,” other
Chinese women such as Zhang Ziyi and Youki Kudoh play a diabolical dragon lady –
the seductive, cruel, and emotionless evil. In Rush Hour 2, Zhang Ziyi’s character is
portrayed always angry without reason and ruthless enough to bomb herself. In Rush
Hour 3, Youki Kudoh’s character constantly attempts to kill Inspector Lee with
daggers, the symbol of a dragon lady. In the end, she is punished by death. Both
images of an Asian woman, as a prostitute and a dragon lady, are historical byproducts
of American imperialism in Asia. However, Hollywood perpetuates them without
questioning their origin or ideological implication. Kwai-Cheung Lo notes that Chan
could do nothing to change these representations of Asian women.
244
This may signify
his limited status in Hollywood.
In his autobiography I am Jackie Chan: My Life in Action, Chan wrote “I was a
useless child. A ragged boy. A reckless teen. And now – Look who I am now!”
245

Published in 1998 soon after the release of Rumble in the Bronx, the book does not
deliver the rest of Chan’s successful story as a transnational kung fu star. Even Chan
himself would not have expected so much to come in the ensuring 10 years. “Who is
Jackie Chan now?” is a question about the past, present, and future of Hong Kong
cinema. It signifies the possibilities as well as limits of global Hong Kong cinema as
the only competitor to global Hollywood. Chan is still hanging onto the Hollywood

244
Lo, 143-4.
245
Chan, 315.
148
street sign luckily as well as dangerously. It will be interesting to observe whether he
will climb up or fall down.
149
Part 3: Hollywood Martial Arts Western
Chapter 5: Kung Fu, the First Eastern Western on American Television
In the early 1970s, the kung fu craze swept American cultural scene. Capitalist
opportunism commodified kung fu in every aspect of popular culture, including film,
television, books, novels, magazines, comics and music. Within this phenomenon, two
representative images of popular kung fu heroes emerged that sharply contrasted with
each other. On one side, there was Bruce Lee who became the ultimate fighting
symbol for social justice. Lee’s cultural nationalism against imperialist foreign powers
on screen appealed to racial minorities in the U.S. On the other side, there was Kwai
Chang Caine, a half-Chinese, half-American Shaolin monk who wandered in the Wild
West on the American mainstream television series Kung Fu. Played by a white actor,
David Carradine, Kung Fu’s hero Caine was a sedate, solemn kung fu master. Like
Bruce Lee, he stood on the side of the weak and oppressed. However, Caine was a
pacifist rather than a fighter. He delivered messages of peace and forgiveness to
people who suffered from racial conflicts and social injustice. It is interesting that
these two strikingly different images of kung fu heroes coexisted and were beloved by
American audiences at the same time. In this chapter, I will discuss under which
circumstances Kung Fu’s bi-racial pacifist hero emerged and how he offered a cultural
fantasy to American mainstream audiences in the early 1970s.

150
Bruce Lee Connection
It is commonly believed that Bruce Lee was deeply involved in the
development of the Kung Fu TV series but rejected for the role of Caine. Supposedly
disappointed, he went back to Hong Kong to restart his career. According to David
Bordwell, being turned down in Hollywood made him more favored in Hong Kong.
The public loved him because he chose to launch a colossal career in Hong Kong not
in Hollywood.
246
In Bruce Lee’s biography, his former wife Linda Lee Cadwell claims
that Lee was rejected because he was “too small, too Chinese, that he wasn’t a big
enough name to sustain a weekly series, and that he was too inexperienced.”
247
I agree
with her and I believe that these four elements altogether affected Warner Brothers’
decision. However, most people, including Lee’s fans and scholars, tend to emphasize
only one aspect – Lee did not get the role because of the ingrained racism of network
television. Quoting Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Lee’s friend who starred in Game of the
Death, Darrell Y. Hamamoto simply asserts that America did not want an Asian star
on its national television.
248
I would not disbelieve that racism existed in Hollywood at
that time. However, I argue that the latter two elements that Linda Lee Cadwell

246
David Bordwell, Planet Hong Kong: Popular Cinema and the Art of Entertainment (Cambridge,
Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2000), 50.
247
Linda Lee, The Bruce Lee Story (Santa Clarita: Ohara Publications, Inc., 1989), 97.
248
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar said “Bruce was an amazing martial artist, but I responded to him for several
other reasons as well. He had been hurt by racism and said so. After having played Kato on The Green
Hornet, he worked with the people who developed the Kung Fu character and was supposed to star in
the television series. He would have been perfect, a master working his art before the national audience,
but whoever it was that decided such things made it clear to Bruce that they didn’t think a Chinese man
could be a hero in America. They passed over Bruce and gave the part, and the stardom, to David
Carradine.”

in Darrell Y. Hamamoto, Monitored Peril : Asian Americans and the Politics of TV
Representation (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1994), 59-60.
151
pointed out – Lee was not big enough and he was inexperienced – were equally
important as racism for the studio’s decision. It is important to note that Lee’s fame in
the U.S. came later, in 1973, when Lee’s Hong Kong films such as The Big Boss
(released in the United States as Fists of Fury), Fist of Fury (released in the United
States as The Chinese Connection), and the Hong Kong-Hollywood co-production
Enter the Dragon were finally released. These came after the series Kung Fu was
launched in 1972. When the show Kung Fu was first envisaged, Lee was best
remembered as Kato, an Oriental chauffer in the unsuccessful TV series The Green
Hornet (1966-7), which lasted for only one season. Lee was not as famous at that time
as we remember today. However, Warner Brothers soon noted Lee’s potential as a
major star after his guest appearance on Longstreet (1971-2), a new TV series. Lee
demonstrated his powerful martial arts skills in the first episode “Way of the
Intercepting Fist,” which fascinated many American audiences. Soon, in October 1971,
Warner Brothers offered him 25,000 dollars and promised to develop a new TV
project for him on the condition that Warner should receive an exclusive hold on his
TV services.
249
This was even before the release of A Big Boss, which turned out to be
a big success in Hong Kong and Southeast Asia. The TV deal was not realized but Lee
accepted Warner Brothers’ film offer, which resulted in the most famous martial arts
movie of all – Enter the Dragon (1973). This implies that it was not solely due to
racism that the studio did not cast Lee for Caine.

249
Lee, 106-7.
152
I argue that we need a new perspective about Bruce Lee’s absence in the Kung
Fu series rather than simply blaming racism for his absence in the show. In short,
Lee’s image did not fit the description of the main character Caine or the theme of the
show. Whereas Kung Fu wanted a sedate man who projected a great sense of inner
peace, Lee was an outwardly dynamic individual who projected an ever-present sense
of power and fury.
250
While kung fu was originally pacifist and was developed by
Shaolin monks as a means of self-defense against warlike people, it is instructive that
the series Kung Fu emphasized the inner strength, chi, in kung fu, rather than the outer
strength that Lee later embodied in his persona. The series focused on Caine’s spiritual
journey in the Wild West rather than on the kind of spectacular kung fu fight scenes
immortalized in Lee’s films. It sounds paradoxical but the series delivered a message
of peace and forgiveness through the violent act of kung fu. While it provided viewers
with an “unusual blend of pacifistic philosophy and violent action”
251
the focus of the
show was not action but “a story about love overcoming hate, good triumphing over
evil.”
252

This does not mean that Bruce Lee did not emphasize the philosophical and
spiritual aspects of martial arts. His own martial arts method, Jeet Kune Do,
incorporated both Western and Eastern philosophies and he attempted to teach his
beliefs through acting. In one episode of Longstreet, written by Stirling Siliphant,

250
Robert Anderson, The Kung Fu Book (Pioneer Books Inc., 1994), 20.
251
Gary A. Yoggy, Riding the Video Range: The Rise and Fall of the Western on Television (Jefferson,
North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers, 1995), 525.
252
Herbie J Pilato, The Kung Fu Book of Caine: The Complete Guide to TV’s First Mystical Eastern
Western (Boston: Charles E.Tuttle Company, Inc., 1993), 7.
153
Lee’s former student and friend, Lee offers a philosophical message in kung fu. His
monologue carries lines such as, “You can’t see but you can hear. Listen to the wind.
The Wind! Listen to the birds. Can you hear them? You have to become the wind.
Empty your mind, man. You know how water fills a cup? It becomes that cup. You
have to be ready, man. You have to think about nothing. You have to become fluid.
You have to become nothing.”
253
Furthermore, Lee asked the production team of
Enter the Dragon to add a new beginning sequence where he teaches his young
student about the universe. One of his lines reads, “Do not concentrate on the finger.
Or you will miss all that heavenly glory.” These lines are very similar to those carried
by Master Po and Master Kan in the TV series Kung Fu. However, they played a small
part compared to Lee’s star persona as an ultimate kung fu fighter. Lee was not the
Caine, a man of inner peace and softness that Warner Brothers was looking for.

Historical Background
The historical setting of the times played a part in envisaging a pacifist kung fu
hero like Caine on American television. The late 1960s and early 1970s was a critical
time period in American history. Political shifts inside and outside the U.S. shook the
nation and social changes were imminent. Hollywood responded by making the new
TV series Kung Fu with a half-Chinese, half-American Shaolin monk in charge. After
the success of a ninety-minute TV movie that aired on February 22, 1972, the new TV

253
Jack Moore, “Superstar Bruce Lee,” Off Duty/Pacific, November 1972. Reprinted in John Little,
Bruce Lee: Words of the Dragon Interviews, 1958-1973. (Boston: Tuttle Publishing, 1997), 151.
154
series Kung Fu continued for three years (1972-1975) on prime time ABC with sixty-
two episodes in total.
254
As Variety notes, the series became a word-of-mouth hit,
255

impacting popular culture with two phrases – “grasshopper” and “Snatch the pebble
from my hand.” As producer Jerry Thorpe comments about the success of the series,
“Kung Fu seems to have touched something in the temper of the times, a rejection of
violence, a thrust toward brotherhood, a feeling for the universal principle of nature,
perhaps.” Indeed, the show corresponded well to the ethos of the time.
First, it was a time when the United States was experiencing a national identity
crisis as a result of political events such as the Civil Rights movement, race riots, the
assassinations of the Kennedy brothers and Martin Luther King, the Watergate scandal,
and the anti-Vietnam War protests. These events revealed conflicts and contradictions
within the nation.

Suffering, America began to look for healing. Kung fu’s
philosophical peaceful messages and wisdom seemed appropriate for the needs of the
times. It appeared it could assure the national wounds and damaged American morals.
It is important to note that even though kung fu is sufficiently powerful as a
cutthroat skill, the Kung Fu series did not teach how to fight or kill. Rather, it

254
The broadcast schedule was following:
Oct.14, 1972 – Nov. 1972 Sat. 8:00 - 9:00
Jan.1973 – Aug. 1974 Thur. 9:00-10:00
Sept. 1974 – Oct. 1974 Sat. 9:00 – 10:00
Nov. 1974 – Jan. 1975 Fri. 8:00 – 9:00
Jan. 1975 – June 28, 1975 Sat. 8:00 – 9: 00
Except From Richard West, Television Westerns Major and Minor Series, 1946-1978 (Jefferson, North
Carolina : MaFarland & Company, Inc., 1998), 136.
255
Variety, January 31, 1973.
155
emphasized that physical training exists only for meditation, not for killing or personal
ambition. Master Kan teaches,
There are two kinds of strengths. The outer strength is obvious: it fades
with age and succumbs to sickness. Then there is the chi, the inner
strength. Everyone possesses it, too. But it is indeed much more
difficult to develop. The inner strength lasts through every heat and
every cold. Through old age and beyond.
The series also underlined kung fu’s philosophy of pursuing harmony with
nature. This was suited to replace social cynicism about the Western civilization,
which American people believed had caused wars and deaths in and outside of the
nation. As hippie culture was enormously popular from the 1960s, Kung Fu’s nature-
loving messages gained popularity with American audiences.
All creatures, the low and the high, are one with nature. If we have the
wisdom to learn, all may teach us their virtues. Between the fragile
beauty of the praying mantis and the fire and passion of the winged
dragon, there is no discord. Between the supple silence of the snake and
the eagle's claws, there is only harmony. As no two elements of nature
are in conflict so when we perceive the ways of nature, we remove
conflict within ourselves and discover a harmony of body and mind in
accord with the flow of the universe. – Master Kan
Moreover, Kung Fu’s moral figures – the Shaolin monks who are detached
from the mundane world – fit quite well into the “a crisis of authority” of the time.
When the Watergate scandal broke out in 1972, people lost their belief in America’s
public authority. American politicians seemed corrupt and snobbish. Idealized cultural
representation of public authority in American culture could no longer hold in a
156
society in which young people scorned public figures and repudiated authority.
256

Instead, American popular culture found the Shaolin monks. They looked to be “ideal”
public figures and spiritual mentors for Americans. Their teachings, such as “Never
forget that a priest's life is a simple one and must remain free of ambition (Master
Po),” and “A wise man walks with his head bowed. Humble like the dust (Master
Kan),” fascinated Americans.
Second, it was the time of the end of Cold War Orientalism, which had
excluded Communist China from friendly U.S.–Asia relations. In her book Cold War
Orientalism: Asia in the Middlebrow Imagination, 1945-1961, Christina Klein argues
that the expansion of U.S. power into Asia during the Cold War period of 1945 to
1961 brought a new idea about Asia – noncommunist Asia was not imagined as enemy
or object of conquest but an ally or subject of integration and partnership, though Asia
was still a subordinate partner.
257
According to Klein, American expansion coincided
with the decolonization of Asia from European imperialism, and America needed an
ideology that American expansion was different from European colonialism. Thus,
American Orientalism generated what Mary Louise Pratt has called “narratives of anti-
conquest”
258
and a wide-ranging discourse of racial tolerance and inclusion.
Communist China was excluded from this paradigm. Hostility towards the communist
China continued until the early 1970s when Richard Nixon’s “Peace Mission” policy

256
Michael Ryan and Douglas Kellner, Camera Politica: The Politics and Ideology of Contemporary
Hollywood Film (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1988), 78.
257
Christina Klein, Cold War Orientalism: Asia in the Middlebrow Imagination, 1945–1961 (Berkeley,
University of California Press, 2003), 1-17.
258
Ibid., 13.
157
no longer portrayed China as an enemy. Winthrop D. Jordan and Leon F. Litwack
explain:
Although Nixon entered the White House with the reputation of a
hardened Cold Warrior, he took the initiative to thaw the Cold War and
establish a stable world order based on détente with the Soviet Union
and the People’s Republic of China. In August 1971 he announced that
he had accepted an invitation from Premier Chou En-lai to visit China.
The peace mission came in February 1972 and resulted in mutual
expressions of good will and agreements to settle differences peacefully
and to expand trade and cultural relations. What few Democratic
presidents might have risked, Nixon had achieved.
259
Nixon’s visit to China in 1972 triggered new interests in anything “Oriental.” It
brought a wave of books, programs, and films with Chinese or Asian themes and
topics. Under such circumstances, the new TV series Kung Fu that introduced exotic
Chinese culture and philosophy was warmly welcomed. David Desser notes that the
show brought Asian martial arts into American homes on a regular and high-quality
basis.
260

Third, the Civil Rights Movement which resulted in the Civil Rights Act in
1964, opened up a favorable atmosphere for accepting racial minorities and their
cultures within American society. In fact, the emergence of the Civil Rights
Movement is deeply related to Cold War Orientalism. Christina Klein argues that the
Cold War ideology of integration was bound up with the domestic project of
integrating African Americans and Asian Americans within the United States. It was

259
Winthrop D. Jordan and Leon F. Litwack, The United States : Combined Edition (Englewood Cliffs,
New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1991), 834
260
David Desser, “The Kung Fu Craze: Hong Kong Cinema’s First American Reception,” in The
Cinema of Hong Kong : History, Arts, Identity, ed. Poshek Fu and David Desser (Cambridge
University Press, 2000), 24.
158
necessary for the U.S. to overcome its ingrained racism to mark the distinction
between communists and the U.S. It was believed that “overcoming racism becomes a
precondition for successful expansion, and expansion the reward for overcoming
racism.”
261
Blacks, Chicanos, Asian Americans, and American Indians raised their
voices to regain their rights and demanded legal reforms to put an end to
institutionalized racism. As a result, as Jane Iwamura puts it, a new tolerance and
respect towards “peoples of color” was growing at the time.
262

The themes of anti-racism and racial harmony were prominent in Kung Fu. As
an offbeat Eastern Western, the show presented a critical vision about the Wild West.
Unlike many traditional Westerns, the show revealed that the West was based on
shameful racism and social injustice. It also portrayed many whites as unconscious
racists and bigots while highlighting the plights and adversities faced by the racial
minorities. By looking back at racism in the Old West, the show simultaneously
commented on the contemporary racism of the 1960s.
Fourth, the new Immigration Act of 1965 played an important part in the
American perception of Asian/Asian Americans and their cultures. The new act
represents a significant watershed moment in Asian American history. It abolished
national origin as basis for allocating immigration quotas: Asian countries were now

261
Klein, 164.
262
Jane Iwamura, The Oriental Monk in American Popular Culture: Race, Religion, and representation
in the age of Virtual Orientalism (Ph.D. dissertation, University of California, Berkeley, 2001). 3, 125.
159
on equal footing with other countries for the first time in U.S. history.
263
As Lisa Lowe
points out, Asians and Asian Americans had faced systematic exclusions through
immigration laws and restrictions on naturalization and citizenship – to name a few,
the exclusion of Chinese in 1882, of Asian Indians in 1917, of Koreans and Japanese
in 1924, and of Philippine immigrants in 1934.
264
However, the new 1965 immigration
law offered a fair chance for Asian immigrants, though it did not end all the
discrimination. It led to a dramatic rise of Asian populations in the U.S., and Asian
American communities have become more diverse. While earlier Asian immigrants
were largely blue-collar laborers from mostly China, Japan, and Korea, the post-1965
immigrants included substantial urban, educated, middle-class background immigrants
as well as many South Asian refugees. They brought many demographic, economic,
and cultural shifts in Asian American communities and mainstream American society
at large. The remarkable educational and professional achievements by children of
these post-1965 Asian immigrants brought America a different perception towards
Asians and Asian Americans in subsequent years.
Finally, this was a time when a new notion about Asian Americans – the myth
of model minority – replaced the old notion of Asians as a racial problem. On
December 26, 1966, U.S. News and World Report printed an essay entitled “Success
Story of one Minority Group in U.S,” which lauded the success of Chinese Americans

263
Stephanie Han, “Asian American Chronology,” in Out of the Shadows: Asian in American Cinema,
ed. Roger Garcia (Olivares, 2001), 286.
264
Lisa Lowe, Immigrant Acts: On Asian American Cultural Politics (Durham: Duke University Press,
1998), 5.
160
in spite of all the discrimination, adversity and prejudice they had experienced in the
past.
Visit “Chinatown U.S.A.” and you find an important racial minority
pulling itself up from hardship and discrimination to become a model
of self-respect and achievement in today’s America. At a time when it
is being proposed that hundreds of billions be spent to uplift Negroes
and other minorities, the nation’s 300,000 Chinese-Americans are
moving ahead on their own – with no help from anyone else.
265

The article further praises the Chinese traditional virtues of hard work, thrift
and morality. This was a big change given that a century earlier the Chinese were
categorized as “the inassimilable aliens” whose hard work and thrift seemed an
economic threat to white Americans. In the late 19
th
century, in which the series Kung
Fu was roughly set, Chinese cheap laborers were racially discriminated against and
America’s anti-Chinese sentiment was about to culminate in the Chinese Exclusion
law of 1882. As “a distinct and antagonistic race,” the Chinese were regarded as
inassimilable aliens who were immoral, uncivilized, and fundamentally unfit for
American citizenship. Sam Booth’s poem called “They are coming” in 1873 illustrates
the general sentiments of the time.
They are bringing plague and pestilence
In ferver-laden ships,
And taking gold and silver back
On their returning trips.
They are bringing hordes of prostitutes
To ply their trade of shame,
And breeding vice and foul disease
Too horrible to name.
In fetid lanes and alleys
They are like a festering sore.

265
U.S. News and World Report, December 26. 1966: 73–8.
161
They are coming, they are coming,
Every week a thousand more.
266

Thousands of Chinese coming from different shores were considered a threat
to American labor, morality and the social order. Since then, “the Yellow Peril” has
been a constant theme in American popular culture in spite of the fact that Chinese as
well as Japanese and Koreans have played crucial roles in America history – in
particular, during the Gold Rush and construction of transcontinental railroads.
However, suddenly the U.S. News and World Report essay portrayed the
Chinese as successfully assimilated Americans. Was this shift possible because the
Chinese truly “made it” in America? Interestingly, the essay juxtaposed the success
stories of Chinese Americans against the failures of other groups of color, especially
African Americans. It implied that African Americans are not successful because they
do not work hard enough, like Asians.
Many Asian American scholars have criticized the model minority. They argue
that it was used to pitch Asian Americans against African Americans. In Orientals:
Asian Americans in Popular Culture, Robert Lee analyzes the crisis of racial policy in
1965, which climaxed with the conflict between Lyndon Johnson’s speech and his
assistant secretary of Labor Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s publication Report on the
Black Family. Lee argues that this conflict formed “the ideological context in which

266
Karen J.Leong, “A Distinct and Antagonistic Race: Constructions of Chinese Manhood in the
Exclusionist Debates, 1969-1978,” in Across the Great Divide: Cultures of Manhood in the American
West (New York: Routledge, 2003), ed. Matthew Basso, Laura McCall, and Dee Garceau, 131-2.
162
the Asian Americans emerged as the model minority.”
267
While Johnson’s speech at
all-black Howard University in Washington, D.C. blamed white racism for black
poverty, Moynihan’s report attributed black poverty to their dysfunctional families.
The model minority thesis emerged as a quick fix in popular media. It is interesting
that the U.S. News article particularly emphasized Chinese Americans’ reluctance to
receive welfare checks compared to Blacks. Moreover, many Asian American Studies
scholars point out that the model minority thesis is not different from the racial
problem thesis. Lisa Lowe argues that stereotypes that construct Asians as the
threatening yellow peril or alternatively that pose Asians as the domesticated model
minority are each equally indices of American national anxieties.
268
Similarly, Henry
Yu notes that the notion of model minority is the other side of the old coin – Asians as
a racial problem.
269
A model minority myth still depends on exoticism and
Orientalism in which Asians are defined as the opposite of everything American. Yu
claims that no matter how much Asian Americans assimilate to America, they are still
exotic and considered permanent aliens in American society.
In spite of the hidden ideological implications of the model minority thesis, the
thesis formed a favorable background for depicting Asian peoples and cultures
positively. There had been virtually no TV series before Kung Fu that featured
someone of Asian descent as a leading character. To boot, it presented its Chinese

267
Robert Lee, Orientals: Asian Americans in Popular Culture (Philadelphia: Temple University Press,
1999), 150.
268
Lowe, 19.
269
Henry Yu, Thinking Orientals: Migration, Contact, and Exoticism in Modern America (Oxford
University Press, 2001). 7.
163
protagonist, albeit bi-racial, as a noble man. Keye Luke, who played Master Po in
Kung Fu, appreciated the show for presenting positive images of the Chinese and
Chinese culture. He stated,
For the first time an entertainment medium is making an honest and
sincere attempt to show the true oriental culture of which I am a part.
… The series gives the American public a better and more authentic
image of the Orientals in this country. It gives them a chance to learn a
little of the history and religion of the Orient.
270
Given that Asians had been more abused in Westerns than other racial
populations as J.Fred MacDonald argues,
271
Kung Fu seemed to make a progress in its
representation of Asians. The series also offered a golden chance for Asian/ Asian
American actors, who had been marginalized in the system, to work for nationwide
television. In addition to the regular cast, such as Keye Luke and Philip Ahn, many
Asian American actors, including James Hong, Guy Lee, Soon-Teck Oh, Victor-Sen
Yung, Benson Fong, Beulah Quo, Pat Lee, and Mako, appeared in numerous episodes.
James Hong, an actor on the show and former president of the Association of
Asian/Pacific American Artists (AAPAA), recalls how their attitudes changed as the
show progressed: At first, Asian actors were cynical about the show since it did not
cast an Asian actor to play the lead in the first place. Eventually yet they realized that
it would be a great source of employment for the Asian acting community and
welcomed it.
272

270
Anderson, 27.
271
J.Fred MacDonald, Who Shot the Sheriff?: The Rise and Fall of the Television Western (New York:
Praeger, 1987), 114-5.
272
Pilato, 33.
164
Reviving the Western
The national crises of the late 1960s and early 1970s coincided with the demise
of the Western, “a most American genre.”
273
The social crises may not have directly
influenced the demise of the genre, but it is a general belief that “for the U.S. the
Western film and national identity are inextricably linked.”
274
Many scholars point out
how westward movement toward the frontier in the 19
th
century was significant in
American history and how it cultivated a unique American national character. The
myth of the Great West formed America’s national vision as a country of freedom,
adventure, infinite possibilities and challenging spirit. “The Frontier Thesis” presented
by Frederick Jackson Turner in 1893 at the American History Society crystallizes how
the westward movement and the frontier spirit shaped American character. He stated:
American social development has been continually beginning over
again on the frontier. This perennial rebirth, this fluidity of American
life, this expansion westward with its new opportunities, its continuous
touch with the simplicity of primitive society, furnish the forces
dominating American character. The true point of view in the history of
this nation is not the Atlantic coast, it is the Great West…
275
Even though the Department of the Interior had officially declared the frontier
closed in 1890, three years prior to Turner’s address, the frontier was never closed in
American minds. Rather, “mystically, the frontier has remained vibrant throughout the

273
Ralph Lamar Turner and Robert J.Higgs, The Cowboy Way: The Western Leader in Film, 1945-1995
(Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1999), xviii
274
Michael Coyne, The Crowded Prairie: American National Identity in the Hollywood Western (New
York: I.B.Tauris Publishers, 1997), ix.
275
Turner and Higgs, xix.
165
twentieth century in the story of the cowboy, told in an evolving array of venues.”
276
It
is not surprising that many American Presidents have tried to paint themselves as part
cowboy: not only is the cowboy a world-wide known symbol of America, but also a
medium who can connect the ideal of the frontier to the American people.
277
Michael
Coyne elaborates:
Most remarkable was Ronald Reagan’s capitalization on his mediocre
claim to sagebrush stardom, based mainly on his stint as host of the
television show Death Valley Days. Only six of his fifty-four films
were Westerns, but he artfully cultivated the image, ceaselessly posing
in Western garb and on horseback at his ranch…So, aside from
Kennedy’s distancing gesture, presidents of the last four decades have
either consciously engaged with the Western or at least employed
Western trappings to deepen their own sense of national identity and
also, virtually, to reinforce their relationship with the American
people.
278

The fact that former presidents such Ronald Reagan, George Bush, and Bill
Clinton attempted to appropriate the image of a cowboy to appeal to the American
people proves that the myth of the Great Western has not completely disappeared in
the American psyche. Rather, as Edward Buscombe and Roberta E. Pearson point out,
“the persistence of the West in various cultural forms attests to the central role it
continues to play in conceptions of national identity.”
279

However, the Western faced imminent decay in the 1960s and 1970s due to
socio-political and cultural shifts in American society. The myth of the Great West
began to be questioned – the belief in western civilization, white racial superiority, and

276
Ibid., xx.
277
Ibid., ix.
278
Coyne, 1-2.
279
Ibid., 3.
166
the ideal of frontiersmanship turned out to be false. America turned out to be a violent
and corrupt country. It was revealed that the westward movement was nothing but a
history of genocide and plunder. Michael Coyne captures it well: “The United States
of the post-Bicentennial era is not the land the Western celebrated. America is not the
nation it once was, and it never will be that nation again.”
280

As the myth of the Great West was being questioned, the Western genre faced
its demise as well. The genre was incapable of catching up with social changes.
Michael Coyne points out how the white male individualism in the genre could not
cope with the emerging multiculturalism through which disparate minority groups
(women, Blacks, gays) began to assert their own particular American identities. It was
not until after this crisis of the genre that the revisionist Westerns that acknowledge
the roles played by women and racial minorities began to emerge. Furthermore, the
Western was being replaced with other genres such as sci-fi as the new demographic
audiences preferred them to Westerns. Coyne puts it,
Vietnam has killed the Western twice. The first time, the war in
Vietnam debilitated the cinematic myth of the West. The second killing
is still an ongoing process: the cinematic myth of the Vietnam
experience is gradually supplanting the Western as America’s most
resonant historical moment.
281

The precipitous rise and fall of television Western should be understood in the
similar contexts. Television Westerns were enormously popular in the late 1950s and
early 1960s. However, the genre lost dominance on prime time by the mid-1960s and

280
Ibid., 190.
281
Ibid., 191.
167
virtually disappeared on television by the mid-1970s. As William Boddy puts it,
“unlike other television genres, from cop show to soap opera to sitcom, which exhibit
long and fairly stable cycle of popularity, the TV Western has never recovered more
than a faint echo of its commercial power in US prime time.”
282
J. Fred MacDonald
even declared the death of the genre: “The Western is dead in television because it is
no longer relevant or tasteful.”
283
It was at this time that Kung Fu emerged in 1972 when the Western genre was
about to completely disappear on television. The network ABC was known for
pioneering prime-time Westerns in the 1950s and 60s,
284
and Kung Fu was one of the
last attempts to recover its reputation and revive the dying genre. Called an “Eastern
Western,”
285
a “Chinese Western,”
286
or a “Western with a twist,”
287
the show
introduced Eastern philosophy and martial arts kung fu in a familiar Western setting.
Emerging from the historical background discussed above, the new Western reflected
the changing ethos of the time – the growing racial tolerance towards people of color,
fascination with China and Chinese-ness, rejection of violence, return to the nature,
and reflection of the Old West. As Yvonne Tasker puts it, the show’s success lay in its

282
William Boddy, “‘Sixty Million Viewers Can’t Be Wrong: The Rise and Fall of the Television
Western,” in Back in the Saddle Again: New Essays on the Western, ed. Edward Buscombe and Roberta
E. Pearson (London: BFI), 119.
283
MacDonald, 119.
284
Boddy, 122.
285
Anderson, 15.
286
Yoggy, 500.
287
Pilato, in Preface.
168
ability to invest both the newly martial arts and the traditional Western with a
“counter-cultural” flavor.
288

Caine, a Bi-racial New Western Hero
Among others, the show features a counter-cultural Western hero who never
fights with a gun, never rides a horse (only once during three years’ running), and
never wears cowboy boots. Instead, Caine fights with fists and walks barefoot,
carrying his shoes over the shoulder. Moreover, he grows his hair long, plays a
bamboo flute, wears worn-out jeans, and eschews meat. This image of a new Western
hero was deeply influenced by the popular hippie culture of the time. In fact, hippie
culture and kung fu philosophy shared many ideals such as harmony with nature and
disdain for possession. Benjamin J. Stein elaborates how Caine was close to the hippie
dream of the time.
Caine has sprung up from that worship of the occult, the different, the
alien that showed itself in the earlier teenybopper adoration of Spock
(the half-other-world-half-human creature of Star Trek), and in the
current fascination with things Chinese. The hippie’s dream, he is, by
birth and education, not part of this degenerate and violent society, yet
he can defend himself in it. He lives by his own standards, without
allowing other people to impose their standards on him. Yet Caine
succeeds in imposing his standards (nonviolently, despite his lethal
skills) on those around him.
289

288
Yvonne Tasker, “Kung Fu: Re-orienting the Television Western” in Action TV: Tough-guys, Smooth
Operators, and Foxy Chicks, ed. Bill Osgerby and Anna Gough-Yates.(New York: Routledge, 2001),
125.
289
Benjamin J.Stein, “Kung Fu,” National Review 1 Mar. 1974:265. Cited in Jane Iwamura, 163.
169
It is well known that the actor David Carradine promoted himself as leading a
“hippie-like” life just like his character, Caine. Jane Iwamura points out that
newspaper and magazine articles depicted Carradine as a hippie “almost to the point of
caricature.”
290
TV Guide reported that Carradine lived in a decrepit shack, showed up
at formal industry affairs barefoot and in ragged jeans, and named his son Free.
Interestingly, Herbie J. Pilato claims that by all this Carradine was not trying to prove
a point; he was just trying to be himself.
291

Yvonne Tasker relates the hippie-like quality of Caine to his masculinity. She
argues that Kung Fu offers a ‘counter-cultural’ articulation of masculinity that was
defined primarily in terms of its spirituality rather than its physicality.
292
Indeed, Caine
displays unconventional masculinity in contrast to macho Western heroes who rely on
their power on physical ability. He is hiding his masculine toughness behind a soft and
gentle smile. His spirituality and mind-control ability save him in many occasions – he
flies through the prison iron bars and survives destructive disasters.
However, Caine’s bi-racial status makes his masculinity more complicated
than simply “countercultural,” as Tasker argues. To Asian audiences, this feminized
and spiritual Western hero looks too familiar. In fact, his masculinity can be read as a
stereotypical Asian masculinity that has been portrayed as soft-spoken, effeminate,
and passive. In his book Racial Castration: Managing Masculinity in Asian America,
David Eng argues that the West has developed a fantasy that makes Oriental and

290
Iwamura, 161.
291
Pilato, 34.
292
Tasker, “Kung Fu,” 122.
170
masculine antithetical. In this cultural imaginary, Chinese men are destined to say “I
am an Oriental. And being an Oriental, I could never be completely a man.”
293

Throughout the series, Caine never screams or makes any noises, even in a combat. As
Pilato puts it, he just breathes.
294
This contrasts sharply to Bruce Lee’s screen image,
which is characterized by his trademark battle whoops and gesture of licking his own
blood. In short, to borrow the term from Eng, Caine is “racially castrated.”
The emphasis on Caine’s spirituality can be seen as a repetition of an
Orientalist fantasy. Frank Chin, a Chinese American playwright and a novelist showed
his anger and frustration in 1974 when the series was still on the air. In his New York
Times essay entitled “Kung Fu is Unfair to Chinese,” Chin argues that the progress
that Asians have made on television is worse than that of apes and chimpanzee.
The progress that Asians of all yellows have made in the movies and on
television is pitiful compared to the great strides in determination made
by apes, dinosaurs, zombies, the Creature from the Black Lagoon and
other rubber creations of Hollywood’s imagination. In 40 years, apes
went from a naked, hairy King Kong, gigantic with nitwit sex fantasies
about little human women, to a talking chimpanzee leading his fellow
apes in a battle to take over the planet. We’ve progressed from Fu
Manchu, the male Dragon Lady of silent movies, to Charlie Chan and
then to “Kung Fu” on TV. … We’ve made no progress at all.
295
Frank Chin especially attacked the way the series valorizes Eastern mysticism
and spirituality: “Kung Fu explains why Chinese are so passive – they’re catatonic as
the result of too many weird candlelight ceremonies and lots of bad writing.” He

293
David L. Eng, Racial Castration: Managing Masculinity in Asian America (Durham: Duke
University Press, 2001), 1.
294
Pilato, 30.
295
Frank Chin “Kung Fu is Unfair to Chinese” The New York Times. March 24, 1974. Sunday Section
II.19
171
concluded that the Chinese in Kung Fu are still “helpless fools” and “passive, docile,
timid, mystical aliens.”
296
Although Chin did not use the term Orientalism, he pointed
out that the show was, in fact, based on Orientalism, which imagines the East as
spiritual and exotic as opposed to the West, the so-called rational and reasonable.
The evidence of Orientalism in the series can be found in the remarks of
producers engaged in the series as well, even though they may not have been aware of
it. In an interview with Irvin Paik, the Korean American who was also a crewmember
of the series Kung Fu, co-producers Alex Beaton and Herman Miller of the last season
stated:
Paik: Why do you think people are watching your show?
Herman: I think we are successful in providing interesting
entertainment. We have a unique character and the stories are unique.
We fulfill some kind of psychic need or “spirituality” that westerners
are looking for. People are interested in the whole East, India, not just
China and Japan, the mystique of the East. (My emphasis)
297

One of the basic tenets of Orientalism is ignoring the differences between
individual Asian cultures and making the whole of Asia a single homogeneous entity.
Through such homogenization,

“the Orient” easily becomes a mysterious “other” to be
studied, observed, and finally conquered by the West.
At a simple glance, such emphasis on spirituality and mystifying or
homogenizing the Orient looks benign, especially in the case of Kung Fu, which
seems to portray Orientals as respectable, noble people. However, in her study on the

296
Ibid.
297
Irvin Paik, “Kung Fu Fan Klub” in Counterpoint: Perspectives in Asian America, ed. Emma Gee
(Asian American Studies Center, University of California Los Angeles, 1976), 291.
172
Oriental monk in American popular culture, Jane Iwamura argues that positive
portrayals or good stereotypes of Orientals need more critical attention because they
may preclude us from seeing ways in which they re-inscribe certain racist notions of
the Eastern “other.”
298
She particularly analyzes how Eastern spirituality is passed to
the West through “the bridge figure” to prove western dominance.
In an analysis of the Oriental Monk as an American icon, we will see a
complex dynamic unfold where Orientalist notions of Eastern spiritual
heritages and Western disillusionment and desire converge. …Oriental
wisdom and spiritual insight is passed from the Oriental Monk figure to
the occidental West through the bridge figure. Ultimately, the Oriental
Monk and his apprentice(s) represent future salvation of the dominant
culture – they embody a revitalized hope of saving the West from
capitalist greed, brute force, totalitarian rule, and spiritless technology
(original emphasis).
299
In other words, Oriental wisdom and spirituality do not exist to prove its
superiority over the West per se but they exist to be transferred to the West. From this
perspective, America’s fascination with Asia is not based on any genuine intercultural
understanding. Rather, it is an attempt to reinforce the system of Western dominance
and superiority. In Kung Fu, Chinese martial arts and philosophy kung fu are
transferred to Wild West America through what Iwamura calls the “bridge figure,”
Caine, to revive Western superiority over the Orient. In fact, Caine’s half-Chinese
identity is a skillful dramatic device to permit the transfer of Oriental spirituality to the
West. Without any Chinese connection, Caine would not have been accepted into the
Shaolin temple. In the pilot movie, Master Kan, impressed by young Caine’s

298
Iwamura, 3, 134.
299
Ibid., 2-3.
173
endurance and persistence, accepts him, saying, “In the Shaolin temple we have never
accepted any one other than fully Chinese birth. (Short smile break) There is a first for
everything.” Caine’s acceptance to the Shaolin temple implies that the West can
perpetuate the East with its superiority.
Furthermore, Caine’s natural talent to digest Chinese philosophy and martial
arts perfectly proves that Caine is superior to other full-blood Chinese. Jane Iwamura
puts it, “Caine’s bi-raciality allows him to embody Eastern spiritual teachings in a way
no pupil fully Chinese could.”
300
After all, as Darrell Y. Hamamoto states, Caine could
be a hero because he was half American.
For the first time, an Asian American male was seen physically
confronting prejudice and racially motivated attacks without fear.
…Kwai Chang Caine never failed to win his self-defensive fights
against white attackers. … For those members of the television
audience who might not tolerate the idea of an Asian beating up white
manhood, Kwai Chang Caine was made to be a half-caste, born of an
American father and a Chinese mother. Only by virtue of his racially
mixed heritage and secondarily, his dual nationality was Caine’s heroic
status permitted.
301
In addition, since a white actor, David Carradine, played Caine, Caine was
more identified as American rather than Chinese by American audiences. The
audiences knew David Carradine was acting – doing the so-called “Yellowface.” In
spite of the heavy make-up to make him look Asian and the pretended clumsy English
Carradine spoke, Carradine’s whiteness stood out throughout the series. Perhaps this is

300
Ibid., 157.
301
Darrell Y. Hamamoto, Monitored Peril: Asian Americans and the Politics of TV Representation
(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1994), 59-60.
174
why Caine’s occasional love interests with white women characters were also
permitted.

White Man’s Burden & Manifest Destiny
As a half-American hero, Caine’s journey in the Wild West has many
purposes. As I already discussed, he transfers Oriental wisdom and spirituality to the
West to prove Western superiority. His journey is also a process of looking for his
American roots. In the second episode of the first season, “Dark Angel,” Caine meets
his grandfather Henry who had never forgiven Caine’s father for marrying a Chinese
girl. However, he finally accepts Caine.
Henry: You have your father in you. I’ve nothing to give you.
Caine: Through you I have a father, a grandfather, a great-grandfather,
stretching back to the roots of time.
Henry: You have a brother. These letters from him, I’ve never
answered. [He offers Caine a packet of letters.] Take them. Find him.
This was my father’s …[He gives Caine a beautiful pocket watch.] This
was your father’s. [He gives Caine a beautiful ring.] That’s all I
have.
302
This episode suggests that Caine is being accepted into an American family as
a legitimate heir, as symbolized by a watch and a ring. In this episode, his grandfather
told him Caine has a half brother called Danny. From then on, search for his unknown
brother becomes Caine’s mission in America, which in fact implies his quest looking
for his American identity.

302
Yoggy, 509.
175
Furthermore, Caine drifts in the Wild West searching for personal salvation. In
his article, “Kung Fu: The Resolution of the Dialectic,” Arthur Asa Berger argues that
Caine is a quintessential American hero who embodies the American imagination.
Kung Fu is as American as chop suey. Though Caine, the hero of Kung
Fu is an oriental priest, he is, nevertheless, half American. He is the
product of a union of a white American father and a Chinese mother,
and in Caine we find a meeting of East and West and a reconciliation
of a dialectic that exists in the American imagination and which is
echoed in the program. Caine, like all Americans, is a spiritual orphan –
a man on a quest, looking for his roots, his “self.” … Caine is a
quintessential American hero – one more spiritual orphan wandering
about through the American moral wilderness in search of personal
salvation and achieving it (like most of our heroes) through the
redemption of his fellow man.
303

Here, Berger points out important purpose of Caine’s journey by situating him
in a larger context of American national culture. As a loner like other Western heroes,
Caine wanders searching for personal salvation – in this case for his murder of the
Emperor’s nephew in China – through redeeming others. The important fact is that in
Kung Fu, those “fellow men” who are saved by Caine are usually racial minorities
such as Native Americas, African Americans, and Asian Americans. The producer and
writer of the show, Herman Miller’s description of Caine illustrates how redemption
of other races is crucial in determining who Caine is.
He is a man who seeks peaceful justice in a time of violent solution. He
becomes almost the inadvertent symbol, the unsought-for (on his part)
champion of the underdog, with whom he can empathize only well –
the Red Man, the Brown Man, the Yellow Man, and the Black. Though

303
Arthur Asa Berger, “Kung Fu: The Resolution of the Dialectic” in Television: The Critical View, 1
st

ed., ed. Horace Newcomb (Oxford University Press, 1976), 106.
176
he doesn’t seek out this kind of action, he yet attracts it, and being what
he is, a man who cannot endure injustice, he must act on it.
304

The redemption narrative in which Caine empathizes with racial minorities and
acts on their side can be seen as white paternalism, the so-called “white man’s
burden.” Originated from Rudyard Kipling’s infamous poem, “The White Man’s
Burden,” the notion is that a white man has to save racial minorities since they are
unable to save themselves. This idea seems benign, but it is ideologically problematic.
First, it presumes that whites are the superior race destined to bring civilization
and democracy to other “inferior” races (savages). In each television episode, Caine
encounters many racial minorities who are in troubles due to racial oppression, class
conflicts, family problems, or personal illness. Whatever their problem is, Caine
solves it for them. The issue is that racial minorities are presented as not having
agency to solve their own problems. Caine, as a superior white who masters Eastern
spirituality as well as death-defying fighting skills, redeems racial minorities from
their sufferings and brings them peace and order. Racial minorities appear to be
helpless and disorganized people who do not have the ability to fight against the
wrongful whites and build democracy with their hands.
Second, since the ideology of the white man’s burden is supposedly a sacred
mission, it justifies all means, especially white man’s use of violence. White violence
is legitimized a necessary, benevolent, and inevitable choice to bring civilization and
democracy to non-whites in spite of great expense to them. Apparently, Caine is a

304
Pilato, 28.
177
pacifist who always tries to eschew violence. Caine never responds to anger in the way
other martial arts heroes do.
305
He utilizes violence only after digesting the moral
lessons he learned at Shaolin Temple. The messages of love for life and peace unfold
through flashbacks. For example,
Perceive the way of nature and no force of man can harm you. Do not
meet a wave head on: avoid it. You do not have to stop force: it is
easier to redirect it. Learn more ways to preserve rather than destroy.
Avoid rather than check. Check rather than hurt. Hurt rather than maim.
Maim rather than kill. For all life is precious nor can any be replaced.
His training at Shaolin Temple, shown via flashbacks, makes Caine meditate
and contemplate a given situation over and over. Only after concluding that violence is
the final choice, Caine executes violence in the name of justice. The slow motion
cinematography in the fighting scenes makes Caine’s action look surreal, beautiful and
mysterious. This way, Caine’s violence becomes more legitimized and even achieves
philosophical distinction.
More problematically, in justification of Caine’s violence, all other violence,
including racial minorities’ employment of violence, is disapproved. Throughout the
series, racial minorities’ use of violence is depicted either as reckless or pointless,
although their use of violence could be legitimate and fair. Caine teaches minorities to
tolerate oppression and discourages them to fight collectively even though they are
ready to do so. In episode 8 of Season 1, titled “Sun and Cloud Shadow,” some
Chinese miners are ready to stand against white Colonel Binns, who unfairly claims

305
Anderson, 30.
178
the mine as his own and wants to evacuate the Chinese forcefully. However, Caine
stops them and resolves the case peacefully on a personal level.
On one hand, Caine’s pacifism can be seen as a reflection of the times. Anti-
violence was one of the popular beliefs that Americans chose to hold when the country
was experiencing violent events. The Civil Rights Activist Martin Luther King Jr. was
a strong supporter of non-violent protests. On his acceptance of the Nobel Peace Prize
in 1964 he condemned violence as follows:
Violence is both impractical and immoral. I am not unmindful of the
fact that violence often brings about momentary results. Nations have
frequently won their independence in battle. But in spite of temporary
victories, violence never brings permanent peace. It solves no social
problem: it merely creates new and more complicated ones. Violence is
impractical because it is a descending spiral ending in destruction for
all. It is immoral because it seeks to humiliate the opponent rather than
win his understanding: it seeks to annihilate rather than convert.
Violence is immoral because it thrives on hatred rather than love. It
destroys community and makes brotherhood impossible. It leaves
society in monologue rather than dialogue. Violence ends up defeating
itself. It creates bitterness in the survivors and brutality in the
destroyers.
306
Martin Luther King Jr.’s case proves how non-violence can be a powerful tool
for resisting social oppression. There have been many other cases in which non-violent
protests have contributed to bringing peace in the history of mankind.
However, the way Kung Fu advocates pacifism can be problematic since the
peaceful resolution of racial conflicts on screen can give the audiences a false fantasy
that racial reconciliation can be easily achievable. This way of dealing with racial
conflicts prevents audiences from looking at the real history of American imperialism,

306
http://nobelprizes.com/nobel/peace/MLK-nobel.html
179
especially in the name of “Manifest Destiny.” At first, Manifest Destiny was a product
of the particular time period of the 1840s – America’s expansion to the West and the
Pacific including Texas, Mexico, the Philippines, Samoa, Cuba, and Puerto Rico.
However, sharing the basic tenets of the “white man’s burden,” it has served as a long-
standing theme of the U.S.’s latent foreign policy.
307

In 1845, John L. O’Sullivan, an ardent Jacksonian Democrat, lawyer, and
journalist, wrote that it was the nation’s “manifest destiny to overspread and to possess
the whole of the continent which Providence has given us for the development of the
great experiment of liberty and federated self-government entrusted to us.”
308
His
writing reflected the ethos of the times – many Americans believed that the United
States had to expand its territory from the east coast to the west coast because it was
“God’s choice.” In Race and Manifest Destiny, Reginald Horsman notes that by 1850
America established the expansionist rhetoric that defined American Anglo-Saxons as
separate, innately superior people who are “destined” to bring good government,
civilization, democracy, commercial prosperity, and Christianity to the American
continents and to the world.
309
In this rhetoric, Anglo-Saxons were believed as a
“chosen people” whose “divine” mission was to enlighten inferior races in God’s
name. It was used to justify the enslavement of the blacks and the extermination of the

307
For the discussion of Vietnam War in terms of Manifest Destiny, see John Hellmann, American
Myth and the Legacy of Vietnam (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986)
308
Walter McDougall, Promised Land, Crusader State: The American Encounter with the World since
1776 (Mariner Books, 1998), 84.
309
Reginald Horsman, Race and Manifest Destiny: The Origins of American Racial Anglo-Saxonism
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1981), 2.
180
Indians and Mexicans. Horsman explains how manifest destiny served the new racial
ideology to justify American imperialism in its early stage.
In the 1840s and 1850s there were obviously specific reasons why
particular Americans desired Texas, Oregon, California, Cuba, Canada,
and large parts of Mexico and central America, and why many urged
the commercial penetration of Asia. Agrarian and commercial desires
and the search for national and personal wealth and security were at the
heart of mid-nineteenth-century expansion, but the racial ideology that
accompanied and permeated these drives helped determine the nature
of America’s specific relationships with other peoples encountered in
the surge to world power. By the 1850s it was generally believed in the
United States that a superior American race was destined to shape the
destiny of much of the world. It was also believed that in their outward
thrust Americans were encountering a variety of inferior races
incapable of sharing in America’s republican system and doomed to
permanent subordination of extinction.
310

The Kung Fu series is roughly based in this time period of “Manifest Destiny.”
Focusing on the difficulties and sacrifices of non-whites, such as Chinese and Native
Americans, the show ostensibly offers a revisionist look at this time period. For
example, the episode called “The Ancient Warrior” in Season 1 deals with how Native
American lost their homelands and got extinguished by whites. In this episode, Caine
befriends an old Indian named “Ancient Warrior,” the last survivor of one Indian tribe
who wants to go back to his birthplace and be buried there. However, white people
already occupied the land and they confront Ancient Warrior with hatred and
prejudice. Ancient Warrior has a legal right to claim the whole land but all he wants is
a small spot for his tomb in the middle of the town. The white people still reject his
petition and express their anger especially about an Indian attack in the past that

310
Ibid., 6.
181
caused the loss of a few whites. Ancient Warrior reminds them how many Indians,
including women and children, were killed before and after the incident. In fact,
whites terminated the whole tribe, except him and his son, who died of illness at the
very beginning of the episode. Ancient Warrior criticizes white people by saying,
“White history sees only with the whites of its eyes.” However, he suggests
reconciliation as well: “Why can you not try to forget and feel the happiness of
forgiveness as I have?”
This episode best represents the racial politics of the Kung Fu series. It seems
to criticize Manifest Destiny, the wrongful past of American imperialism, by
empathizing with non-whites. Since the show was produced in the early 1970s when
America was experiencing a national crisis, such a revisionist look at the Wild West is
not surprising. However, the episode suggests forgiveness or oblivion is the best
policy for reconciling social conflicts. By depicting Ancient Warrior, a dignified
Native American survivor forgiving the horrible Indian genocide, the show presents
the history of American imperialism easily forgivable and negligible. As Master Po
teaches the audiences, it delivers a message of “To hate is like drinking salt water. The
thirst grows worse.”
311
Furthermore, by presenting a complicated history as a personal
matter of forgiveness, as Jane Iwamura points out, the Kung Fu series tended to
individualize the politics of race and configure an idealistic, pacifist approach to social
oppression.
312

311
In an episode 4, “An Eye for an Eye,” in Season 1.
312
Iwamura, 145-152.
182
The Kung Fu TV series is a good example of American appropriation of Asian
martial arts. In spite of its complex nature – the guise of an “Eastern” or “Chinese
Western” – Kung Fu is a typical American Western that attempts to recover America’s
damaged national identity by presenting a moral white hero who engages in legitimate
violence. If Bruce Lee was a racial minority’s hero whose film persona challenged
social oppression without fear, Caine, despite his countercultural look, was a
quintessential American hero who embodied dominant white ideologies such as the
white man’s burden and Manifest Destiny. Both Bruce Lee and Kwai Chang Caine
were beloved by American audiences, but Caine could have never replaced Bruce Lee,
especially in racial minorities’ minds.
183
Part 3: Hollywood Martial Arts Western
Chapter 6: Japan and the White Samurai Fantasy in The Last Samurai
The second season of Heroes, the popular NBC TV series, begins as Japanese
character Hiro (Masi Oka) teleports to feudal Japan and meets the legendary samurai
Takezo Kensei (David Anders). To Hiro’s surprise, Kensei turns out to be a gaijin
(foreigner) with blond hair and blue eyes. Such an image of “a white samurai” is not
new in American popular culture – notoriously, Richard Chamberlain as Black
Thorne/Anjin-sang, the first Western samurai in the early 17
th
century feudal Japan in
the television mini series Shogun (1980), based on James Clavell’s novel, Tom Cruise
as Nathan Algren in The Last Samurai (2003), and Uma Thurman as a female samurai
and kung fu master in Kill Bill (2003).
The white fantasy of becoming a samurai warrior is one symptom representing
the complicated American desire for Japan that has been shaped by the shifting
Japanese-American relations of the past 150 years. Since Commodore Perry’s Black
ships opened the door of Japan in 1853, the United States and Japan have developed a
complicated relationship, which arguably “has undoubtedly been of tremendous
importance in the shaping of the contemporary world order and of twentieth-century
life generally.”
313
Japan and the U.S. have reached unprecedented closeness today,
but, as John W. Dower puts it, “The U.S.-Japan relationship is not an equal one, and

313
Roland Robertson, “Japan and the USA: The Interpenetration of National Identities and the Debate
about Orientalism,” in Dominant Ideologies, ed. Nicholas Abercrombie, Stephen Hill, and Bryan
S.Turner (London: Unwin Hyman, 1990), 183.
184
never has been.”
314
This unequal relationship is registered in representation of Japan in
contemporary Hollywood films, which embody contradictions within the American
popular discourse of Japan that draws on the historical relations between two countries
as a friend and enemy, as well as partner and competitor.
Hollywood has portrayed Japanese in many different ways: as a barbaric
Oriental, martial samurai warrior, exotic geisha, mysterious Zen, economic animal,
sneaky ninja, and brutal yakuza, to name a few. The image of Hollywood’s white
samurai is particularly interesting. During the American Occupation of Japan from
1945 to 1952, SCAP (Supreme Commander Allied Powers) banned the making of
samurai movies.
315
It believed that the samurai Bushido, the code of honor of the
samurai, fueled aggressive and expansion-oriented fascism, which led to World War
II. Japanese critic Sato Tadao admits that popular prewar Japanese samurai movies
influenced the growth of a militant spirit in the country.
316
It was known that the
Japanese Imperial Army inherited the spirit of feudal samurais – the only difference
was that it was armed with rifles instead of swords. The modern army still worshipped
the Emperor as “the living God” and believed in his absolute authority. The kamikaze
pilots (a Japanese term which means “warriors of the divine wind”) during the World
War II, whose suicidal mission was to crash their planes into American war ships and

314
John W. Dower, “Graphic Japanese, Graphic Americans: Coded Images in U.S.-Japanese Relations,”
in Partnership: United States and Japan, 1951-2001, ed. Akira Irie and Robert A. Wampler (Tokyo:
Kodansha International, 2001), 302.
315
Michitaro Tada, “The Destiny of Samurai Films,” in Cinema and Cultural Identity: Reflections on
Films from Japan, India, and China, ed, Wimal Dissanayake (New York: University Press of America,
1988), 37.
316
Sato Tadao, "Akira Kurosawa: Tradition in a Time of Transition." Cinemaya 42 (1998): 28-32
185
bombers, were often compared to “modern samurai.” During World War II, American
propaganda criticized such loyalty and obedience to the Emperor as the primary
source of Japanese madness and savageness. As John W. Dower argues, “Japs” were
portrayed as either subhuman or superhuman, possessed of uncanny discipline and
superhuman fighting skills.
317
However, in the contemporary world, Hollywood has
made a “samurai Western,” a nostalgic saga that highly glorifies samurai soldiers and
feudal militarism. What are the politics behind this ironic filmmaking, given the fact
that samurai movies are no longer popular in Japan except on small TV screens and
that such romanticization and glorification of samurai culture cannot be easily found
in Japan’s own samurai movies?
Compare The Last Samurai with the Japanese production Twilight Samurai
(2003) released in the same year, starring Hiroyuki Sanada who also acted in The Last
Samurai. Set in the same period of the Meiji Restoration and the ensuring rapid
modernization, the two films present sharply opposite perspectives regarding the role
of the samurai in the changing Japanese society. Although Twilight Samurai also
underlines the nobility of the samurai in the end the film presents the protagonist,
Seibei Iguchi, as an ordinary low class samurai who does not have any ambition to
succeed or to preserve the value of Bushido. Rather, he is a family man whose priority
is how to help his family survive against the starvation of the times. The majority of
the film depicts the sufferings of a low class samurai in the era of the demise of the

317
John W. Dower, War Without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War (New York: Pantheon
Books, 1986), 9.
186
samurai class – even his love interest is conditioned by his class status and poverty.
The narration by Seibei’s daughter tells us that Seibei Iguchi died in the Boshin War
where he fought with the rebels against the Emperor’s government, just as depicted in
The Last Samurai. But there is no glorious battle sequence in Twilight Samurai, as in
The Last Samurai. The fight sequence in the end only shows the tedious process how
the samurai fights and dies due to the gradual loss of the blood. Director Yoji Yamada
emphasizes that samurai sword fighting does not actually lead to the instant glorious
or honorable death. In the battle, a samurai dies because of loss of blood, and his life
gradually ebbs away. Overall, the director intended to make a realistic period drama
without glorifying samurai culture. In contrast, The Last Samurai is a blockbuster epic
that highly glorifies the code of samurai.
In this chapter, I will examine the romanticization and glorification of a
samurai in The Last Samurai by looking at the way the film revives the Western
mythology. As a “samurai Western,” the film is nostalgic for the Wild West that
mirrors its demise onto the fall of the samurai class and Japanese feudal society.
Identifying Japan’s history of loss and recovery, it rehabilitates the American
shameful past of the Indian genocide as an inevitable and honorable historical progress
for the modern nation. Moreover, the portrait of Japan as a masculine war hero armed
with spirituality reflects the critical period of post-9/11 and the Iraq War, wherein the
United States desires a strong ally and political partner. There is a certain domestic
need to project a strong Japan in the U.S. imagination.
187

Japanese Transnationalism
To understand the glorification of samurai in The Last Samurai it is necessary
to look at how Japan has emerged as a powerful player in contemporary global
cultural scenes. In an old model of globalization, American or Western culture was
considered as an omnipresent cultural-imperialist power that homogenized local
cultures. However, it is generally agreed that today’s globalization is characterized by
its multiplicity and complexity. In his book Recentering Globalization: Popular
Culture and Japanese Transnationalism, Koichi Iwabuchi discusses how Japanese
transnationalism has emerged as a new alternative globalizing force that challenges
American hegemony. He notes Japanese audiovisual products, what he names the
three C’s, globally circulate; that is, consumer technologies (such as VCRs, karaoke,
and the Walkman); comics and cartoons (animation); and computer/video games.
318

Iwabuchi calls this phenomenon “Japanization,” although he admits there is risk of
misjudging the nature of Japanese transnationalism by that name. He elaborates:
I would argue, it is possible and perhaps productive to take the
awkwardness denoted by the notion of “Japanization” as an opportunity
to reconsider the meaning of transnational cultural power which has
long been understood in terms of “Americanization,” and to appreciate
the precarious nature of transnational cultural consumption, rather than
to dismiss the pervasiveness of Japanese influence. The rise of Japanese
cultural export can, I suggest, be read as a symptom of the shifting
nature of transnational cultural power in a context in which intensified
global cultural flows have decentered the power structure and vitalized

318
Koichi Iwabuchi, Recentering Globalization: Popular Culture and Japanese Transnationalism
(Durham: Duke University Press, 2002), 27.
188
local practices of appropriation and consumption of foreign cultural
products and meanings.
319

In particular, Iwabuchi focuses on the success of Japanese cultural products
within the Asia region: it promotes supranational regionalization of Asia and
challenges the Western domination model of cultural globalization. Indeed, by calling
attention to the intra-Asian cultural exchanges that have been neglected or
marginalized in Globalization Studies he demonstrates an example of the
“glocalization” that he advocates.
However, Iwabuchi also discusses limits and problems of Japanese
transnationalism. On one hand, he points out that Japanese cultural products in Asia do
not carry an overt desire or image of/for Japan.
320
According to him, what is
appreciated in Asia is not an image or idea of Japan but simply a materialistic
consumer commodity, a highly materialistic Japanese version of the American
original: compared to American power, which is all-inclusive, including political,
economic, military, and cultural levels, Japanese power remains one-dimensional. On
the other hand, Iwabuchi notes Japanese cultural products circulating in the West are
mukokuseki, a Japanese term which literally means “something or someone lacking
any nationality.”
321
He argues that the characters of Japanese animation and computer
games do not look “Japanese.” Rather, they are heavily “Westernized” without

319
Ibid., 35.
320
Ibid., 32-35.
321
Ibid., 28.
189
obvious attachments to Japan or Japanese-ness. Only such “odorless” Japanese
commodities can easily cross over to the West without much resistance.
In a similar vein, in “A Challenge to Hollywood? Japanese Character Goods
Hit the US,” Anne Allison describes the popularity of Japanese TV shows and games
such as Power Rangers and Pokemon among American kids. She shares the same idea
that the desire for Japanese goods in the U.S. does not carry an overt desire or image
of/for Japan and American children do not much care about their Japanese origins.
However, she points out that, without doubt, along with the consumption of Japanese
goods, Japan is becoming a more familiar and normalized part of the everyday world
of American kids.
322

If it is mukokuseki commodities among Japanese-made products that circulate
in the American market, Hollywood’s manufactures of Japanese culture are “too”
Japanese. If exported Japanese cultural products were too authentic they would not
cross over to the West. However, consider how Hollywood produces exotic, so-called
“authentic” Japanese culture. Samurai, geisha, tea ceremony, Zen, yakuza, ninja and
martial arts (jujitsu, judo, karate, and kendo) – these are the icons that represent Japan
in American culture, from highbrow to lowbrow, and from mainstream to independent
productions. I argue that it is an American version of Japanese-ness that American
audiences become fascinated with. What is more interesting is that it seems even
Japanese audiences do not mind consuming Japanese images filtered through

322
Anne Allison, “A Challenge to Hollywood? Japanese Character Goods Hit the US,” Japanese
Studies 20, no.1, 2000: 87.
190
American eyes. The Last Samurai was warmly received in Japan and became a box
office success. In spite of its latent Orientalism, Japanese audiences rather appreciated
the way The Last Samurai acknowledges Japanese tradition. I wonder why Japanese
culture has received such special attention in Hollywood. It needs to be understood in
a larger context of triangular relations between the United States, Japan and Asia.

The Triangular Relation
Koichi Iwabuchi points out that Japan’s modern national identity has always
been imagined in an asymmetrical totalizing triad between “Asia-the West-and
Japan.”
323
In this triad, Japan has defined itself as the only non-Western, modern
nation in Asia, an “America of Asia” whose civilization mission is to bridge the East
and the West.
The binary opposition between “traditional,” or “underdeveloped,”
Asia and the “developed” West has been necessary for Japan to be able
to construct its national identity in a modern and West-dominated
world order. Japan has constructed an oriental Orientalism against
“inferior Asia.”
324

The idea of equalizing Japan with the “superior” West laid the foundation of
Japanese imperialism during World War II. Japan rapidly emerged as the West’s rival
colonialist power in East Asia. The ideology known as “the Greater East Asia Co-
Prosperity Sphere” propagated that Japan’s leadership would bring prosperity to the
whole Asian region and justified Japan’s invasion in many Asian countries. The

323
Iwabuchi, 6-11.
324
Iwabuchi, 8.
191
official history of Japanese colonialism in Asia ended after its defeat in 1945; however
today Japan still has condescending attitudes towards other parts of Asia, which
lingers in Japanese nationalism (Nihonjinron in particular) and cultural
transnationalism. This is why Iwabuchi criticizes Japanese transnationalism as much
as he welcomes it.
Importantly, the U.S. also believes in this paradigm and thinks of Japan
differently from other Asian countries, as the only Asian nation possibly equal to “us,”
although it has been a gradual and reluctant acceptance. When Japan emerged as a
colonizer in Asia, it shook the entire West. As John Dower points out, it challenged
not only the Western imperial presence but also the entire mystique of white
supremacy on which centuries of European and American expansion had rested. After
Japan’s defeat in World War II, Japan was occupied by the U.S. and experienced rapid
modernization under American supervision. To the United States, Japan was an
important satellite for testing the superiority of American capitalism against
Communism in the Cold War politics. As Chalmers Johnson puts it, “from
approximately 1950 to 1975, the U.S. treated Japan as a beloved ward, indulging its
every economic need and proudly patronizing it as a star capitalist pupil.”
325
However,
it is generally believed that Japan achieved its own unique modernization through a
“domestication of the West.”
326
Chalmers Johnson also argues that Japan found “a

325
Chalmers Johnson, Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire (New York:
Metropolitan Books, 2000), 117.
326
Joseph Tobin, “Introduction: Domesticating the West.” in Re-Made in Japan: Everyday Life and
Consumer Taste in a Changing Society, ed. Joseph Tobin (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992), 1-2.
192
third way” between the free market and socialist economic system.
327
As a result,
within a short period of time, Japan achieved an economic miracle and by the late
1970s it had become the “Number One” model for Americans to follow in every
aspect of politics, economy, education, welfare, and even crime control. Ezra
F.Vogel’s influential book Japan as Number One: Lessons for America argues that
Japan is an illuminating mirror for America and that Americans have practical things
to learn from “Orientals.”
328
The disciplined samurai image in The Last Samurai is a
reflection of this kind of perception, where Japan is considered a country with
discipline and self-control – major factors for Japan’s economic miracle but
considered lacking in America. In the film, impressed by the disciplined samurai way
of life, Nathan Algren (Tom Cruise), like Vogel, shows deep admiration: “I’ve never
seen such a discipline.”
However, by the 1980s, America faced a dilemma: Japan’s success satisfied
America’s parental pride but it went too far: enough to threaten America
economically. Japan began to control every aspect of American industries, including
steel, consumer electronics, robotics, automotive, cameras, semi-conductors, and
media. The sale of Manhattan’s Rockefeller Center to Japanese investors was
considered a symbolic incident to Americans to prove their anxiety that Japan was

327
Johnson, 183.
328
Ezra F.Vogel, Japan as Number One: Lessons for America. (Massachusetts: Harvard University
Press, 1979).
193
“buying into America’s soul.”
329
The U.S. began to imagine Japan as an economic
yellow peril that would take over the American economy. The once celebrated
Japanese economic system, operated by a few conglomerates, or zaibatsu, and its close
relationship with the government became despised as “sumo capitalism,” “samurai
capitalism,” or “feudal capitalism.”
330
Time magazine ran a cover with a faceless
personification of corporate Japan in samurai armor.
331
How Japan emerged a
powerful economic player can be exemplified by a book published in Japan in 1989. A
prominent Japanese politician, Shintaro Ishihara, and the president of Sony, Akio
Morita, co-wrote a book called The Japan That Can Say No. In this book, they claim
that the modern era shaped by the West is over, and Japan is the new future because
Japanese technological superiority transcends Western modernity.
332

American anxiety was concentrated on Japan’s dominance in technology as
well. This was expressed in the form of “techno-Orientalism.” In their essay, “Techno-
Orientalism: Japan Panic,” David Morley and Kevin Robins argue that the American
awareness of Japan’s technological modernity in the 1990s has brought a desperate
new form of Orientalism that still can exhibit the superiority of the West.
333
According
to them, techno-Orientalism arose as a solution to the so-called “Japan problem” that
challenged Western supremacy in modernity and technologies. The West developed a

329
David Morley and Kevin Robins, Spaces of Identity: Global Media, Electronic Landscapes and
Cultural Boundaries.(London: Routledge, 1995)
330
For details, see John W. Dower in Partnership
331
Robert G. Lee, Orientals : Asian Americans in Popular Culture (Philadelphia: Temple University
Press, 1999), 205.
332
Morley and Robins, 148-149.
333
Ibid., 147-152.
194
new form of techno-Orientalism that questions the values underlying Japan’s
superiority in technology.
Morley and Robins point out that techno-Orientalism suggests that Japan
achieves technological supremacy because it does not play by the rules. In contrast,
the American economy abides by universal principles and moral codes at the cost of
its technological development. The Hollywood film Rising Sun (1993) exemplifies
techno-Orientalism. As the adaptation of Michael Crichton’s novel by the same title,
the film portrays Nakamoto, a multinational Japanese corporation as a threatening evil
economic animal, armed with immoral high technology and unjust business practices.
The motto of the company is “Business is War,” and its only interest is wining the war
by all means. Japanese businessmen wiretap the competitor’s conversation and keep
constant surveillance on business meetings through a series of hidden cameras in order
to steal information. It overtly depicts the Japanese getting ahead through unfair
business practices. They are represented as “stealers.” They even alter the security
tape that includes a murder scene through their secretive technology. Moreover,
techno-Orientalism portrays Japanese advanced technology as cold and inhuman, and
the Japanese as impersonal “robots.” In Rising Sun, the Nakamoto building is depicted
as a prison with hundreds of surveillance cameras to watch every single move of their
employees. Even the world of yakuza is represented as a “high tech” underworld. The
private brothel operated by yakuza is protected secretively by modern technology and
many American women are imprisoned under high-tech surveillance.
195
Morley and Robins pinpoint the contradiction within this techno-Orientalism.
While the Japanese are perceived as technologically advanced and modern, they are
still also seen as barbaric and feudal people who embody an exotic, enigmatic, and
mysterious essence of Japanese-ness. This rings true in Rising Sun. While the
Nakamoto company operates its business with modern technology, its corporate
culture is still culturally pre-modern and outdated. The company has such a strict
hierarchy that employees are “deferential subordinates” who unconditionally obey
their bosses and never question authority. Such contradictory perceptions of Japan
represent complicated U.S.-Japan relations. On one hand, this exemplifies that Japan is
associated with part of Asia, the exotic and inferior Other in American minds. On the
other hand, it demonstrates that Japan is considered the “only” powerful Asian country
whose modernity and technology can even bring “panic” to the West. As Chalmers
Johnson puts it, Japan is the only country in Asia that avoided being colonized.
334

Japan-bashing slowly disappeared in the late 1990s. In the new millennium,
Japan has become the United States’ closest partner in many respects, including
culture, economy, technology, and military. As Iwabuchi argues, contemporary
Japanese cultural transnationalism, which apparently looks challenging to Hollywood,
in fact helps Hollywood be omnipresent and heavily relies on American global
distribution power. Given the historical development of their partnership, Hollywood’s
making of The Last Samurai, which retrospectively reflects the moment of Japan’s

334
Johnson, 179.
196
emergence as a world power, is not shocking. Japan’s transformation from an isolated
feudal state into a major military power of the world in the late nineteenth century was
an event of great importance not only for Asia, but also for the West, particularly to
the U.S.

A Dream of a White Samurai
The Last Samurai is set in the 1870s, shortly after the Meiji Restoration (1866-
1869) when Japan threw off its feudal past and rushed into the modern age, adopting
Western ideas, techniques, and institutions. Among others, building a modern national
military was the biggest task in these reforms. The slogan of Meiji was fukoku-kyohei,
meaning “a rich country and a strong military.” The abolishment of a feudal military
system that centered on a Shogun was inevitable; the edicts commanded samurais to
cut their hair off in Western style and to cease wearing swords, as is shown in The
Last Samurai. A conscription army that allowed the lower classes, including peasants,
into the army system was skillfully presented as a democratic gesture rather than an
autocratic imposition.
335
Although the film does not depict what came next after
Japan’s successful transformation into a modern military system, we all know that it
led to Japan’s imperialism – the invasion of Russia, China, Korea, and World War II.
The 1870s was also a time period in which the United States prepared to
become a great world power, after the Civil War (1861-1865). In The American Age:

335
Meirion Harries and Susie Harries, Soldiers of the Sun : The Rise and Fall of the Imperial Japanese
Army (New York: Random House, 1994), 23
197
United States Foreign Policy at Home and Abroad since 1750, borrowing the words of
historian David P. Cook, Walter LaFeber defines the period of 1865 – 1896 in
American history as a time of “laying the foundations for Superpowerdom.”
336
He
argues that the steel and oil businesses run by Andrew Carnegie and John D.
Rockefeller, respectively laid the foundations on which was built the world’s
economic superpower of the twentieth century.
337
Economic expansion naturally led
territorial expansion in and outside the U.S. The wars against Native Americans
reached their peak between 1870 and 1890. They marked the last step needed to unify
and consolidate the U.S. before Americans could go abroad. The ideology of
“Manifest Destiny,” the foundation of the westward movement, was extended to the
Pacific Ocean, including the annexation of Hawaii, Guam, and the Philippines in the
following decades.
These stories about the foundations of imperialism in the U.S. and Japan are
juxtaposed through Hollywood fictionalization in The Last Samurai. The French and
Prussians, who were hired by the Meiji government to train the conscript army in the
real history, were replaced with Americans.

The film fictionalizes Japan striving to
westernize itself in coalition with American interests by making exclusive rights to
buy modern weapons from the U.S. This historical inaccuracy is an inevitable
dramatic device to make a “samurai Western.” The film has a unique narrative that
combines the generic characteristics of the American Western with the samurai film. It

336
Walter LaFeber, The American Age: United States Foreign Policy at Home and Abroad 1750 to the
Present (New York: W.W.Norton & Company, 2
nd
,1994), 157.
337
Ibid., 158.
198
was not an odd choice because the two genres are often compared similar due to their
historical setting in the past, focus on violent action, and mythological functions.
In his book Gunfighter Nation: The Myth of the Frontier in Twentieth-Century
America, Richard Slotkin criticizes the ideological and symbolic functions of the
Frontier myth in the Western. He introduces the prevailing mythic narrative structure
in the Western.
In each stage of its development, the Myth of the Frontier relates the
achievement of “progress” to a particular form or scenario of violent
action. “Progress” itself was defined in different ways: the Puritan
colonist emphasized the achievement of spiritual regeneration through
frontier adventure; Jeffersonian (and later, the disciples of Tuner’s
“Frontier Thesis”) saw the frontier settlement as a re-enactment and
democratic renewal of the original “social contract”….But in each case,
the Myth represented the redemption of American spirit or fortune as
something to be achieved by playing through a scenario of separation,
temporary regression to a more primitive or natural state, and
regeneration through violence.
338

Slotkin argues that this scenario of separation, temporary regression, and
regeneration through violence is problematic because violence is presented as “an
essential and necessary part of the process through which American society was
established and through which its democratic values are defended and enforced.”
339

The Last Samurai repeats the same scenario. Algren gets separated from his
country and his original mission (“separation”), joins the primitive samurai group who
uses non-modern weapons (“temporary regression”), fights in the honorable war
against the Imperial Army on the side of samurai, and finally redeems his guilt for the

338
Richard Slotkin, Gunfighter Nation : The Myth of the Frontier in Twentieth-Century America (New
York: Maxwell Macmillan International, 1992), 12.
339
Ibid, 352.
199
Indian genocide (“redemption of American spirit”). In this narrative, violence used
towards samurais is presented as an essential and necessary part of the process through
which Japanese society was established as a modern nation.
Edward Zwick states in the production notes, “The Japan we created is one of
imagination in that it no longer exists.”
340
In other words, Japan and the samurai in the
film are imaginary creations based on American fantasy and American needs to reflect
American history. The film is a quintessential American Western in Japanese guise.
Only the Wild West backdrop is replaced with a Japanese prairie, and the Native
Americans are merely replaced with Japanese. Nostalgia for the doomed samurai, “the
nobility of failure”
341
in Ivan Morris’s term, is, in fact, nostalgia for the Wild West
before its dream was tainted by the Indian genocide and industrialization. Like other
American Westerns, The Last Samurai symbolically rehabilitates the American
shameful past of the Indian genocide as inevitable and honorable historical progress
toward modern America.
Considering this narrative, it is not surprising that The Last Samurai is often
called “Dances with Zen Buddhism”
342
or “Dances with Samurai.”
343
The film
resembles Kevin Costner’s Western, Dances with Wolves (1990), in many ways. Both
films ostensibly seem to present the superiority of other cultures, yet the stories unfold

340
Tommy Tung, “How to Make the Cut: Film Preview The Last Samuraii,” Asia Pacific Arts Online
Magazine (UCLA Asia Institute), Nov. 21, 2003. www.asiaarts.ucla.edu/112103/samurai.html
341
Ivan Morris, The Nobility of Failure: Tragic Heroes in the History of Japan (Farrar, Straus and
Giroux, 1998).
342
Jay Stone, Ottawa Citizen, Dec. 5 2003.
343
Variety 393 no3 44, 49, Dec 1-7, 2003.
200
from the white man’s perspectives, and thus end up celebrating the white man’s
heroism.
Dances with Wolves is a story about Civil War Lieutenant John Dunbar (Kevin
Costner), who is worn out by the American Civil War, goes to the frontier post he
dreams of, and finds true peace by befriending a Sioux tribe. Similarly, Algren,
disillusioned war veteran, goes to Japan, lives with Japanese samurai and begins to
love their culture. As Dunbar is reborn in the Sioux tribe, Algren finds a new life in a
Japanese village. John Dunbar is an implausible white character whose curiosity
outweighs his prejudices and the prevailing racism of that time. As the Sioux Indian
Kicking Bird (Graham Greene) says, “He’s a special white man.” It is his tolerance
and open-mindedness that find the values of Indian civilization, not the excellence of
Indian culture per se.
It is the same in The Last Samurai. What matters is not the superiority of
Japanese culture itself, but how Algren finds and loves it. This discovery of Japanese
culture makes Algren different from other white Americans, portrayed as opportunists
in the film. Both Dunbar and Algren are examples of bell hooks’ arguments that the
“white male’s life becomes richer, more pleasurable, if he accepts diversity.”
344
To put
it differently, the white male’s acceptance of Indian and Japanese culture, respectively,
implies the superior American ability to master other cultures. Algren learns how to
use a samurai sword very quickly. Of course it is not easy at first but he never gives up

344
bell hooks, Black Looks: Race and Representation (Boston: South End Press, 1992), 31.
201
and finally succeeds. He is even superior to other samurai in learning Japanese culture.
In fact, a hero who crosses the borders between “wilderness and civilization” and
operates effectively on both sides of the line is the typical character of the Western, as
Slotkin demonstrates.
345

Another way both films celebrate white heroism is the narrative in which white
characters fight on the side of non-whites. After Dunbar fights in a war on the side of
the Sioux, against the Pawnee, he writes in his journal, “I’ve never been in a battle like
this. There was no dark political objective. This was not a fight for territory or riches
or to make men free. It had been fought … to protect the lives of women and children
and loved ones…I felt a pride I’d never felt before. I’d never really know who John
Dunbar was.” The same goes for The Last Samurai. Algren’s heroism climaxes in the
battle as he stands on the side of the samurai against his own American army. Algren’s
motivation is simple. To quote from Dunbar’s notes, there is no dark political
objective in his fight. He fights to protect the lives of a woman he falls in love with
and her children. Although the samurai are doomed to lose, Algren fights
courageously until the last moment. Through this last heroic act, Algren recovers his
honor and moral code that had been destroyed by his contribution to the Indian
genocide. By helping another racial minority – Japanese in this case – Algren finds his
salvation from “white guilt.”
346
White guilt can be defined as feelings of guilt
experienced by white people when they consider present or past wrongs committed by

345
Slotkin, 351.
346
Zwick’s another film Siege presents the narrative of white guilt too.
202
whites against non-white people. The narrative of white guilt in both films reflects a
collective sense of guilt in American society regarding the Indian Genocide and the
hardship of racial minorities. However, as usual, such narrative is used to seek the
symbolic salvation of white guilt and celebrate white heroism.
While The Last Samurai follows the ideological narrative of the Western, it
also presents a generic characteristic unique to samurai films – mystical aversion to
guns. In general, the heroism of a Western protagonist comes from his shooting skills.
But in samurai films, the true samurai disdains the gun because the gun is considered
“a symbol of encroaching industrialization, a manifestation of the nonmythical and
antitraditional, and an embodiment of the impersonal mechanization of war.”
347
To
samurai, military pride was based on individual honor, not technology. Japan’s
aversion to guns is based on historical fact: Japan adopted guns once but abandoned
them soon after. It is not during the Meiji Restoration when guns were first introduced
in Japan, as shown in The Last Samurai. Guns arrived in 1543 when Europeans
opened the door to Japan as the first Westerners. The book Giving Up the Gun:
Japanese Reversion to the Sword, 1543-1879 tells the remarkable history in which
Japan voluntarily chose to give up an advanced military weapon and returned to a
more primitive weapon when it closed its door to the West until 1853 when
Commodore Perry re-opened the door.
348

347
Stuart M. Kaminsky, American Film Genres, 2
nd
ed. (Chicago: Nelson-Hall, 1985), 64-5.
348
Noel Perrin, Giving Up the Gun: Japanese Reversion to the Sword, 1543-1879 (David R Godine,
1995)
203
We find this disdain for guns in The Last Samurai. Algren’s aversion to guns
comes from his killing of innocent women and children in the Indian Wars. He once
makes a living by demonstrating his gun skills at a “Buffalo Bill’s Wild West” type of
show. Here, guns imply corruption and commercial opportunism. In contrast, samurai
swords are portrayed as sacred weapons that are only used to protect innocent people.
Algren learns how to use samurai swords and becomes a legitimate samurai when he
masters the skill. It is noteworthy that in the end Nathan Algren is the only survivor,
“the last samurai,” to inherit samurai Bushido. Although it is ambivalent who is the
last samurai – Katsumoto, Nathan, or both – it is clear that Algren’s memoirs and his
voice will become the legitimate history of the last samurai clan. The end of the film
implies that Algren will come back to the small Japanese village where his new
Japanese lover Taka and her children are waiting for him. Algren gets the exotic Asian
female and kids, and simultaneously becomes the last legitimate heir of the great
Japanese tradition. In other words, his aversion to guns and ensuring mastery of
samurai swords is a device to make him the legitimate last samurai.

Zen Buddhism and Orientalism
The Last Samurai seems to present many positive images of traditional
Japanese society and culture. Samurai society is portrayed as something noble,
honorable, and more civilized than modern American society, which is depicted as a
corrupt imperialist power that devastates the world with its profiteering adventurism
204
and destructive war machines. The Indian Wars are highly criticized; particularly, the
Black Hills War, led by General George Armstrong Custer (1839-1876), is vilified.
Furthermore, a samurai is represented as a disciplined and masculine man who
treasures honor, duty, loyalty and principles. Given the history of an Asian man in
Hollywood – as either Dr. Fu Manchu (threatening evil) or M. Butterfly (emasculated
men) – this is quite different from previous representations. Katsumoto, played by Ken
Watanabe, will be remembered as one of the most positive images of an Asian man in
Hollywood film history.
Katsumoto is based on the real figure Saigo Takamori, one of the most
influential samurai in Japanese history. As one of the leading figures in the Meiji
Restoration who later was appointed the head of the Imperial Guard, he did not oppose
the Meiji government’s modernization policy at first. Rather, he advocated a modern
army consisting of the samurai class only, which was different from the wish of the
Meiji government. The government wanted a conscript army that allowed all classes in
because it knew the abolishment of the feudal class system was inevitable. Takamori
withdrew from the government when his plan to use a Korean expedition to motivate
the samurai class was turned down. After his return to his hometown, he led the
Satsuma Rebellion of 1887, in which 42,000 samurai fought against the government,
which had just eliminated their rice stipends and priviledged status. Although
Takamori lost the war, he became a legend in Japanese minds.
205
Inspired by this true story, writer-director Zwick created a strong samurai
leader character, and Japanese actor Ken Watanabe accomplished an extraordinary
performance. As The New York Times puts it, “Watanabe has a charismatic,
formidable presence that makes him hard to resist.”
349
Literally, Watanabe occupies
the screen “physically and spiritually,” and he is even compared to a “latter-day
(Toshiro) Mifune,”
350
whose great performance as a samurai in many Akira Kurosawa
films made him the most memorable Japanese actor in Western minds. Watanabe was
nominated for best supporting role at the Academy Awards, although, not surprisingly,
he did not win.
While there is something noble and great in Watanabe’s performance, his role
as Katsumoto is, however, not far from the stereotypical representation of the Asian
leader as “a man of Eastern wisdom.” He orders his newly widowed sister Taka
(Koyuki) to take care of the injured Algren, who just killed her husband in the battle.
“That was good death,” says Katsumoto to Algren, who is puzzled by his intention to
let him be cared for by his sister. Both Algren and Taka do not understand what
Katsumoto thinks inside. But Taka believes that Katsumoto is always right so she
obeys his order. In short, Katsumoto is an inscrutable yet wise Asian man who speaks
hard-to-get “fortune cookie wisdom.”
Notwithstanding characters, The Last Samurai is based on the Orientalist
cliché of Zen. Although traditional Japan is not portrayed as backward or inferior, the

349
“Samurai is Epic but Repetitive.” New York Times, Dec. 5, 2003.
350
Stanley Kauffmann, The New Republic, 229 no 26/28 26-7, Dec 29 2003 – Jan 12 2004.
206
film projects the prototypical image of Japan as “Zen country,” although Zen is
scarcely mainstream Japanese culture.
351
William Kelly points out that one of the
seven deadly clichés regarding Japanese national character in the Western imagination
is “Zen aesthetes,” which portray Japan as the mysterious exotic East – a reservoir of
nature, purity, calmness, spirituality, and refined sensibilities.
352
The Last Samurai
reiterates this Zen stereotype.
Before Algren goes to Japan, he is a pathetic, self-hating, alcoholic loser who
makes a living on a gun performance. He suffers from the traumatic memory of his
army slaughtering Native Americans. He is haunted by the recurring images of
innocent Indian women and children being killed. Through his nightmare sequence,
the film portrays the American War against the Native Americans as an evil war
without honor or moral code.
However, when Algren is captured by samurai enemies the door for spiritual
salvation is wide open. Impressed by the dream of a white tiger (symbolizing Algren)
and the unrefined warrior quality of Algren himself, Katsumoto keeps Algren alive to
learn about the enemy. There, Algren is spiritually reborn in “Japan Spa,” a small
traditional Japanese village where innocent native Japanese people take care of him
and gradually accept him as a friend. Zen and samurai Bushido, the peaceful but
powerful Eastern ways of life detoxicate Algren from his longtime nightmares of the

351
Sato Tadao, “Popular Culture in Modern Japan” Dimensions of Contemporary Japan: A Collection
of Essays, ed. Edward R.Beauchamp (New York: Garland, 1998), 244.
352
From Kelly’s lecture outline at Yale University. http://classes.yale.edu/02-
03/anth254a/lectures/outline_1_1.htm
207
West. In his memoir he writes, “There is something spiritual in this place.” Algren
finally falls into a deep sleep: “Here I have known my first untroubled sleep in many
years.”
In Orientalism,

the Orient is believed to have the spiritual mystic power to cure
the West, since the West has lost the ability to heal itself. Losing innocence is a price
the West paid in the process of modernization and civilization. While the Orient is the
object of conquest, its spirituality should be preserved so the West can come back
whenever it misses and needs its spiritual Other. This spiritual Orient is, in fact, a
mirror image of the West itself – the lost, innocent self. The Orient exists for the West
for whatever purposes: in this case, for personal healing. This is one of the basic tenets
of Orientalism, and The Last Samurai faithfully follows its logic.
The ending of The Last Samurai further perpetuates Orientalism. After the
battle ends with the demise of the samurai class, determined Algren delivers the sword
of the dead Katsumoto to the Meiji emperor. Katsumoto’s sword symbolizes the
integrity and spirit of samurai Bushido that should be cherished. Algren reminds the
Meiji emperor that Japan had a great tradition that should not be forgotten. Moved by
Algren’s speech, the emperor ends his pro-Western modernization policies on the spot.
The emperor, portrayed as a powerless puppet during the whole movie, suddenly finds
his authority. This ending is another cliché of the West enlightening the East, a trope
all too familiar in American cinema. As The New York Times puts it, the film is a
208
“patronizing narrative of a white man teaching the rapidly modernizing Japanese how
to honor the past”
353
and “how to be Japanese.”
354

The Politics of Nostalgia
While the film portrays Japan as an Oriental Other under the protection of
white paternalism, it also depicts Japan as a “masculine” modern nation that
successfully attained modern militarization like the United States. The film juxtaposes
stories of militarization between two countries that eventually led them to become two
powerful imperialists in the world. This Hollywood portrayal of masculine Japan
contrasts with that of the Occupation period in which imperial Japan was imagined as
emasculated and feminized. In Embracing the East White Women and American
Orientalism, Mari Yoshihara points out the way Ruth Benedict’s The Chrysanthemum
and the Sword, a post-war study on Japanese national character, feminized Japan’s
most masculinist ideology of imperialism and the military system of samurai.
Imagining Japan as a feminine other was not new at that time, but Yoshihara notes that
Benedict’s text was different from earlier approaches because it portrayed Japan
feminine “not by looking at Japanese women’s lives, but by looking at the
masculine.”
355
The American imagination of Japan as a feminized Other still lingers in
Hollywood as shown in films such as Memoirs of a Geisha (2005).

353
Motoko Rich, New York Times, Jan.4, 2004.
354
Stuart Klawans, The Nation. Dec. 29 2003 v 277 i22 p42
355
Mari Yoshihara, Embracing the East White women and American Orientalism (New York: Oxford
University Press, 2003), 178-9.
209
The portrait of Japan as masculine war hero armed with spirituality in The Last
Samurai is noteworthy given the military cooperation between the U.S. and Japan
since the Occupation. In his book Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of
American Empire, Chalmers Johnson explores the important role of Japan in the
building of the U.S. military empire. He argues that the emergence of the U.S. as a
military empire is based on its military station in Okinawa. America’s two major wars
against Asian communism – the Korean War and the Vietnam War – could not have
been fought without bases in Japan.
356
Likewise, Japan’s recovery from World War II
benefited from American engagement in wars in Asia. Such a close militant
relationship is one of the backgrounds from which the portrayal of Japan as masculine
war hero comes.
Further, I argue that Hollywood’s glorification of Japanese militarism cannot
be separated from current military politics, in which “the United States has been doing
everything in its power to encourage and even accelerate Japanese rearmament,”
357
as
Chalmers Johnson puts it. In his article, “No Longer the ‘Lone’ Superpower: Coming
to Terms with China,” Johnson argues that China’s emergence in world politics and
economy threatens the Japanese-American cooperative bloc.
358
According to him, the
U.S. has urged Japan to rearm in order to checkmate North Korea and to balance
China. In fact, Japan’s remilitarization has taken many forms since 1992 when the

356
Johnson, 39.
357
Chalmers Johnson, “No Longer the ‘Lone’ Superpower: Coming to Terms with China,” Japan
Policy Research Institute, http://www.jpri.org/publications/workingpapers/wp105.html
358
Ibid.
210
International Peace Cooperation Law permitted Japan to send troops to U.N.
peacekeeping operations. The gradual process was greatly accelerated in 2001 by the
simultaneous coming to power of George W. Bush and Prime Minister Junichiro
Koizumi. One of their elaborate plans for military cooperation is to revise article nine
of Japan’s Constitution, which renounces the use of force except as a matter of self-
defense. What is ironic is that it was during its Occupation that the U.S. that
constituted the laws that prohibited Japan from future remilitarization.
359
Now the U.S.
desperately seeks the remilitarization of Japan.
Notwithstanding possible future conflict with China, the U.S. needs Japan’s
remilitarization because of the Iraq War. During the Gulf War, Japan could only make
a contribution of ten billion dollars for war expenses. But in today’s Iraq War, Japan
has finally sent troops to support the U.S. The Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro
Koizumi said, “America has made many sacrifices to create a viable democracy in
Iraq. Japan must be a trustworthy ally for the United States.”
360
Such involvement is
considered “Japan’s most controversial and riskiest military venture since World War
II.”
361
If America’s wish is to turn Japan into the “Britain of the Far East,” as
Washington neo-conservatives like to say,
362
it would not be wrong to see the
celebration of Japanese ancient militarism in The Last Samurai as a reflection of

359
Masao Miyoshi and H.D.Harootunian, “Japan in the World,” in Japan in the World, ed. Masao
Miyoshi and H.D.Harootunian (Durham: Duke University Press, 1993), 2.
360
CNN News, December 9, 2003. “Japan to Send Troops to Iraq”
http://www.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/asiapcf/east/12/09/japan.troops/
361
CNN News, January 26, 2004. “Attack on Home for Japan”
http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/meast/01/26/sprj.nitop.japan.attack/index.html
362
Johnson, “No Longer the ‘Lone’ Superpower: Coming to Terms with China”
211
America’s desire for a strong allied force. The narrative that a white samurai fights in
an honorable war and gains a strong military spirit also reflects the American soldiers’
wish for an honorable war and strong military spirit.
363
On December 13, 2003, The
Los Angles Times published an article on how the U.S. Marines perceived The Last
Samurai. Strikingly, not only did the article compare the U.S. Marines to the samurai
but also soldiers who were interviewed identified themselves with the samurai in the
film.
Like the samurai, the Marine Corps is dedicated to protecting a society
but remains aloof from that society. In an age when hedonism is the
rule, the true warrior remained uncorrupted. “It’s the warrior ethos, the
combat mind-set,” Said Sgt. Jack Carrillo, who served in Iraq. “The
samurais had it, the Marines have it.” The samurais were a small,
closed group. The Marine Corps is the smallest of the military services
and prides itself on having the toughest training regimen… “The
samurais refused to abandon their historical ways even though they
knew they were going to lose,” Carrillo said. “That’s what the Marine
do for you, teach you tradition. We’re like samurais, we’re usually
outnumbered but we don’t quit.”
364
It is not surprising that U.S. Marine officers identify themselves with samurai
because, among the Armed Forces of the United States, the Marines is the only
military unit that carries swords like a samurai. Originated from Mameluke warriors of
North Africa, Marine swords are now used only for ceremonial purposes. However,
they still carry the important symbolic meaning of American military tradition to the
Marines. Sharing the same icon or symbol, ancient Japanese warriors become role
models for the U.S. Marines. It becomes obvious that romanticization and glorification

363
In his review of the film, Brian D Johnson in Maclean’s wrote, “I feel we’re being conscripted into
America’s nostalgic search for an honorable war.”
364
“Marines recognize aloof ‘Samurai’” Los Angeles Times, Dec.13. 2003.
212
of the ancient militarism in The Last Samurai resonates with the contemporary
moment of the Iraq War.
The image of a white samurai in American films and television series is a
symptom that reflects American desire for and anxiety over Japan. On the one hand, it
represents a longing for respectable, old Japanese tradition. On the other hand, it can
be seen as the white fantasy of mastering and controlling Asian culture. Not only The
Last Samurai but also Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill is a good example. It is an irony
that a white Caucasian samurai, the Bride, slaughters a hundred yakuza members with
a samurai sword that is specially made for her by the world’s greatest samurai sword
smith. In the duel scene, the head of the yakuza, O-Ren Ishii, scorns the Bride: “Silly
Caucasian lady wants to play with samurai sword.” However, the Bride cuts off the
top of Ishii’s head, and proves that she is the real master of the samurai sword. As long
as American belief in white superiority continues, the character of a white samurai
will reappear on Hollywood screens.
213
Conclusion: The Emergence of Hallyu Stars as New Martial Arts Characters
The influx of Asian martial arts on Hollywood screens is likely to continue. An
array of kung fu-themed films is waiting to be released in 2008. The Forbidden
Kingdom (2008) opened at approximately 3,900 American screens on April 18, 2008
and ranked No.1 at the box office in its opening weekend, making $20.9 million.
There were high expectations for the film before its release since it is the first pairing
of the most popular contemporary kung fu stars, Jackie Chan and Jet Li. Speed Racer
(2008) is the Wachowski brothers’ new film after The Matrix trilogy, based on a
Japanese popular television series. It will feature what they call “car-fu” (car + kung
fu). Kung Fu Panda (2008) is a DreamWorks family animation that presents an animal
panda as a kung fu master. Jackie Chan did a voiceover of the Master Monkey
character in this film. Lastly, Laundry Warrior (2008) is a story of a fugitive Asian
warrior who hides out in the American West. Michael Peyser, the producer of the film,
explains, “We draw on two great milieux, the Samurai movie and the Western.”
365
The
film will be a Samurai Western and Oriental fantasy action film. These films
demonstrate that martial arts are still appealing to a wide array of American audiences,
from children to adults.
Among others, Laundry Warrior signals a new trend in contemporary
Hollywood martial arts/action filmmaking. Produced by Barrie M. Osborne, the
producer of the global blockbuster The Lord of the Rings series, the film cast a popular

365
Patrick Frater, “‘Rings’ Producer on ‘Laundry’ List: Osborne Sets Schedule for Fantasy Film,”
Variety, October 30, 2007.
214
Korean star, Jang Dong Gun, as the protagonist Yang. Laundry Warrior is Jang’s
debut Hollywood film, and he is paired with an American actress, Kate Bosworth.
Jang is the star of many Korean blockbusters, such as Friend (2001), Taegukgi (2004),
and Typhoon (2005), and is one of the most representative Korean Hallyu celebrities.
Hallyu, a Korean term that translates as “Korean stream,” or “Korean wave,” refers to
the cultural phenomenon of Korean pop culture’s extreme popularity in the Asia
region. Time magazine describes Hallyu as “the Asia-wide obsession for that country’s
[Korea] pop culture.”
366
Since the late 1990s, Korean culture such as television dramas,
films, music, fashion, and celebrities have been enormously popular in Asian countries
such as China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan, Vietnam, the Philippines, Singapore,
Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, Mongolia, and many others. Due to Jang’s popularity
in Hallyu-influenced countries, he was once cast for Chinese fifth generation director,
Chen Kaige’s martial arts epic, The Promise (2005). Although the film did not do well
at box offices, it was an ambitious co-production among China - Hong Kong - Japan
and South Korea, and matched Jang with Hong Kong pop star Cecilia Cheung. That
Jang was cast in the Hollywood film Laundry Warrior signals that Korean
transnationalism Hallyu has finally landed in Hollywood.
In fact, Jang Dong Gun is not the only example of a Hallyu star in Hollywood.
Rain (a.k.a. Bi), a Korean R&B star as well as an actor, plays the supporting role of
Taejo Togokhan in Speed Racer (2008). He is cast as a protagonist in the Wachowski

366
Bryan Walsh, “Rain,” Time, April 30, 2006.
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1187264,00.html
215
brothers’ next project, Ninja Assassin (pre-production, 2009), which will be co-
produced by Joel Silver. Rain was selected as one of the 100 most influential people of
the year in both 2006 and 2007 by Time magazine. In 2007, he was number 1, winning
almost half a million votes.
367
Lee Byung Hun, another Hallyu star, who is best known
for the Korean blockbuster JSA: Joint Security Area (2000), plays a supporting role to
Hollywood star Josh Hartnett in Tran Ahh Hung’s film noir I Come With the Rain
(2008). Lee is currently shooting a Hollywood action film, G.I. Joe (2009), in which
he plays a ninja character, Storm Shadow. Jun Ji-hyun (a.k.a. Gianna Jun), a female
Hallyu star, plays an action heroine, the half-human vampire hunter, Saya, in Blood:
The Last Vampire (2008). Based on Japanese popular anime by Oshii Mamoru, the
film is an international co-production among Hong Kong, Hollywood, and Japan. Jun
became extremely popular in Asia with her Korean films Il Mare (2000) and My Sassy
Girl (2001), which were remade in Hollywood as The Lake House (2006) starring
Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock, and My Sassy Girl (2008), starring Elisha Cuthbert
and Jesse Bradford, respectively.
Some would hastily celebrate the casting of Korean stars in these Hollywood
films as the achievement of Korean transnationalism. In my dissertation, I mainly
focused on the representations of Chinese and Japanese martial arts, and excluded
Korean martial arts such as Taekwondo. This is because there has been virtually no
representation of Korean martial arts in Hollywood films even though Taekwondo is

367
http://www.time.com/time/specials/2007/time100walkup/article/0,28804,1611030_1612457,00.html
216
one of the most popular Asian martial arts practiced as sports in Americans’ daily
lives, far more than kung fu. This indicates Korea’s relatively weak political and
cultural power in the U.S. compared to that of Japan and China. Korea’s marginal role
in the U.S. and world politics has made its people and culture relatively overlooked in
American popular culture. However, with the advent of Hallyu, Korea has finally
become a powerful player in the cultural globalization process in Asia, which used to
be dominated by China and Japan. The Hollywood casting of Hallyu stars indicates
that Korean transnationalism in Asia is powerful enough to be recognized by
Hollywood. As Asian markets occupy a significant market share of Hollywood foreign
revenues, Hollywood wants to try the commercial potential of the Hallyu stars. The
casting of Korean actors will help sell movie tickets not only in Hallyu-influenced
Asian countries but also in Asian American communities that are exposed to Hallyu
through imports of popular culture hot in their mother countries. DVDs and videotapes
of Korean television dramas dubbed in other Asian languages are easy to find in Asian
American video stores and on cable channels. Now Korea’s cultural power begins to
extend across the globe, far beyond Asian territories.
However, what is interesting to me is not the fact that Korean transnationalism
Hallyu has finally crossed over to Hollywood. While looking at the promotional still
images of the Korean stars in their Hollywood debut or second films, I am struck by
the fact that they are all posed wearing a sword, which symbolizes they are martial arts
characters. Whether his or her role is a ninja, samurai, or an undefined warrior or
217
hunter, they play Asian characters with martial arts expertise. What does this
phenomenon signify? I suggest understanding it using the theoretical framework I
proposed in my dissertation.
In my dissertation I argued that the representation of Asian martial arts in
Hollywood is a result of constant negotiation between American Orientalism and
Asian transnationalism. On one hand, Asian martial arts have satisfied the American
fantasy of imagining Asia as an exotic, mysterious, and barbaric Orient. Although the
details of American Orientalism have changed in relation to changing political and
economic relations between the U.S. and each Asian country, the basic tenets of
Orientalism have remained intact. On the other hand, martial arts have been a
powerful tool for Hong Kong professionals going global. Hollywood has hired Hong
Kong martial arts stars because it has recognized the cultural power of their skills.
While Hong Kong martial arts stars have been pigeonholed to play limited roles within
Hollywood they also have benefited from such a system to pursue a global career and
success.
I argue that this framework can be applied to the casting of Korean stars for
martial arts characters in Hollywood films. It proves that American Orientalism still
lingers in Hollywood practices. It is true that action roles can be comfortable choices
for the Hollywood studios and Korean actors given that English is Korean actors’
second language and they are not accustomed to acting in English. However,
Hollywood casting signifies that Korean actors are first conceived as “Orientals”
218
whose yellow bodies are easily associated with Asian martial arts in American minds,
rather than “actors” who are capable of performing a variety of roles. Korean actors
can be used as substitutes for aging Hong Kong martial arts stars such as Jackie Chan
and Jet Li. Merely replacing Chinese with Koreans, Hollywood seems to repeat its
formula of “Asia = martial arts” in order to fulfill American fantasy. The Korean stars’
new martial arts characters will fortify American Orientalism. However, without doubt,
martial arts roles are offering Korean stars a chance to go global. The fact that these
Korean actors do not have genuine martial arts skills poses no problem. They are
young enough to adapt martial arts skills for filmmaking, and CGI is advanced to
make their moves look real, as proven by cases of American actors. What is important
for Hollywood is that Hallyu stars are hot in Asian countries. Having enjoyed the
wealth and fame Hallyu has brought to them, there is no reason for young Korean stars
to reject tempting Hollywood offers that might open rosier and brighter future for
them.
The Hallyu influence in Hollywood, exemplified by its casting of Korean stars
for upcoming martial arts roles, may turn out to be a brief phenomenon. Depending on
box office results, the Hollywood careers of the Korean stars may end with one or two
martial arts roles. However, even if it is brief, I see in this that the history repeats itself.
As long as the American desire for an Oriental Other continues, the Hollywood
appropriation of Asian martial arts will not stop.
219
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Abstract (if available)

Abstract This dissertation examines the so-called "Asian invasion, " the representation of Asian martial arts in Hollywood against the wider backdrops of cultural globalization, American domestic politics of race and sexuality, and U.S.-Asia relations. Martial arts have been a critical means for both the Hong Kong and Hollywood film industries to dominate global cinema.

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Asset Metadata

Creator Shin, Mina (author)

Core Title Yellow Hollywood: Asian martial arts in U.S. global cinema

School School of Cinema-Television

Degree Doctor of Philosophy

Degree Program Cinema-Television (Critical Studies)

Publication Date 07/21/2008

Defense Date 05/13/2008

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag Bruce Lee,Globalization,Hong Kong cinema,Jackie Chan,kung fu,Martial arts,OAI-PMH Harvest,Race,Western

Language English

Advisor Polan, Dana (committee chair), Iwamura, Jane Naomi (committee member), Lippit, Akira Mizuta (committee member), Marez, Curtis (committee member)

Creator Email shinmina77@hotmail.com

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-m1370

Unique identifier UC1184913

Identifier etd-Shin-20080721 (filename),usctheses-m40 (legacy collection record id),usctheses-c127-197116 (legacy record id),usctheses-m1370 (legacy record id)

Legacy Identifier etd-Shin-20080721.pdf

Dmrecord 197116

Document Type Dissertation

Rights Shin, Mina

Type texts

Source University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

Repository Name Libraries, University of Southern California

Repository Location Los Angeles, California

Repository Email cisadmin@lib.usc.edu