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Electronic Theses, Treatises and Dissertations
The Graduate School
2005
Kung-Fu Cowboys to Bronx B-Boys:
Heroes and the Birth of Hip Hop Culture
Cutler Edwards
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THE FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY
COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES
KUNG-FU COWBOYS TO BRONX B-BOYS: HEROES AND THE BIRTH
OF HIP HOP CULTURE
By
CUTLER EDWARDS
A Thesis submitted to the
Department of History
in partial fulfillment of the
requirements for the degree of
Master of Arts
Degree Awarded:
Fall Semester, 2005
Copyright © 2005
Cutler Edwards
All Rights Reserved
The members of the Committee approve the Thesis of Cutler Edwards, defended
on October 19, 2005.
______________________
Neil Jumonville
Professor Directing Thesis
______________________
Maxine Jones
Committee Member
______________________
Matt D. Childs
Committee Member
The Office of Graduate Studies has verified and approved the above named
committee members.
ii
I give this to many people: to my parents, who alternately encouraged, cajoled,
and coerced me at the appropriate times in my life—good timing, folks. To my
brothers by birth, who are stuck with me, and my brothers and sisters by choice,
who stick with me anyway—you are true patriots. Thanks for the late nights,
open minds, arguments, ridicule, jests, jibes, and tunes—the turntables might
wobble, but they don’t fall down. I could not hope for a better crew.
R.I.P. to O.D.B., Jam Master Jay, Scott LaRock, Buffy, Cowboy, Bruce Lee, and
the rest of my fallen heroes.
iii
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
First I would like to thank Bawa Singh, who inspired me to pursue history in
graduate school. Sally Sommer helped me develop the original idea from which
this thesis grew, broadened my ideas, and sharpened my focus. And to my
committee, who were not only part of my thesis, but an important part of my life
during graduate school: Matt Childs, who never fails to make clear that I still
have roads to travel, Maxine Jones, who always seems certain I will reach my
destination, and most importantly Neil Jumonville, who is always excited to come
along for the ride.
iv
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Abstract
..........................................................................................
vi
....................................................................................
1
2. The Cowboy as American Hero.........................................................
4
3. Kung-Fu Invaders..............................................................................
The Cowboy Connection ................................................................
26
33
4. The Kung-Fu Hero.............................................................................
Classic Kung-Fu .............................................................................
Kung-Fu Comedy ...........................................................................
39
39
45
5.
Kung-Fu B-boys .............................................................................
53
6.
Conclusion ....................................................................................
67
1. Preface
NOTES
....................................................................................
69
BIBLIOGRAPHY ....................................................................................
85
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH ....................................................................
93
v
ABSTRACT
The scholarly study of hip hop is still in its infancy, and the focus in 2005 still
rests largely upon African roots. However, many influences helped to shape hip hop
culture in New York during its formative period in the 1970s. One of the most important
of these was the Chinese kung-fu film, and the kung-fu heroes upon whom this cinema
centered.
Rather than being seen as a foreign concept, the kung-fu hero fit into
American culture as an ideological descendant of the mythological American cowboy.
By tracing the history of the cowboy as American hero and then investigating the
similarities between cowboy hero and kung-fu hero, the reasons for the kung-fu hero’s
acceptance in America, particularly by minority audiences, become clear. Finally, an
analysis of the movement in kung-fu films and hip hop dance (called breaking or bboying), reveals how the kung-fu hero affected the development of hip hop culture, and
its aesthetic and philosophical underpinnings.
vi
PREFACE
Intellectual history is a difficult field to define. Maybe it is the history of ideas.
But what is the significance of those ideas? From where do they spring, and how do
they influence the world in which they arise? So maybe it is not simply about ideas, but
about the relationship between what people think, and the way they live. In that way,
intellectual history is essentially history itself, encompassing everything under the sun.
No wars, social movements, political parties, or cultural shifts occur without some sort of
accompanying ideology, nor do the ideas behind them stop evolving after they occur.
History does not happen in a vacuum, and its influences are many and varied.
Mohandas Gandhi took ideas from Thoreau’s Civil Disobedience in his campaigns in
India; Martin Luther King, Jr. completed the East-West cycle when he, in turn, took
inspiration from Gandhi. Potatoes and Ireland may be synonymous now, but without
their introduction around 1600, the history of that island—and indeed the United
Kingdom and the United States—would be very different.
It is with that fact in mind that I approach this topic. Broad, transnational
considerations are important in studying any subjects in the modern world. The recent
focus on Atlantic history, integrating Africa, Europe, and the Americas for a more
complete understanding of the Atlantic region between the 16th and 19th centuries, is a
good example. By looking at a variety of influences, historians broadened conceptions
of their fields and produced more accurate, widely useful work. But even the
development of Atlantic history is a microcosm of the necessities of modern history.
The exponential increases in travel, technology, and information exchange in the last
century have outpaced the entirety of human history prior to the Industrial Revolution.
Information and ideas move at such an astounding pace that it is no longer possible (if it
ever were) to study a subject in a narrow way. Political developments in Asia directly
affect economic markets in the West; US pop music stars inspire youth-led revolutions
1
in Eastern Europe. The best approach to a full (or at least better) understanding of any
topic, anywhere, is in a global context.
That understanding is permeating scholarship today. Thomas McEvilley’s 2002
opus, The Shape of Ancient Thought, is a monumental, empirical investigation of the
roots of Western culture. He exposes the interconnectedness of Greek, Persian, and
Indian thought, proving that none of those cultures were philosophically independent.
Consequently, subsequent studies of western culture will have to consider the
influences of eastern thought. In a small way, my thesis follows McEvilley’s lead—The
Shape of Hip Hop Thought, if you will. The values of hip hop culture, and the identifying
characteristics of b-boys, have a long tradition in American history. B-boys are the
quintessential urban cowboys: independent, self-reliant, inventive, loyal, and adherent
to a personal creed. But the development of hip hop culture was only indirectly
influenced by cowboys. In McEvilleyian fashion, b-boys found their immediate
inspiration in the kung-fu hero, a traveler from halfway around the world who arrived in
New York City in the 1970s.
In the United States, the kung-fu hero was welcomed by a culture ready to
accept him and his abilities. His virtues and values reached back, through the most
recent American hero—the cowboy—to the roots of western culture, to our ideas of
what heroism has been for millennia. This is modern, American intellectual history, but
we must look across an ocean and back through the centuries to trace the roads which
led to the Bronx. By so doing, we can gain a greater understanding of the development
of the vibrant, global culture hip hop has become. Perhaps the connection between
East and West, between these two seemingly unrelated cultures, can also help us
understand why hip hop so rapidly spread across the globe, and can serve as an
example for consideration of foreign influences on contemporary American pop culture
and thought.
But the transnational, multicultural nature of this thesis is not relevant only as a
consideration of intellectual history. The field of dance history in the United States has
traditionally been focused on the history of concert and performance dance, which falls
into two basic categories: ballet and modern dance. Until very recently, the study of
social dance had not joined the discussion. In the last thirty years, though, dance
2
historians have looked to the social realm, to investigate both the cultural significance
and meaning of movement, and how social and concert dance affect each other—the
latter of these questions is particularly relevant in the wireless world of the twenty-first
century. The study of American social dance is, like the study of American popular
music, at its root the study of African-American forms. But in a post-television-andportable-radio world, dance history is incomplete if it does not consider the myriad
influences bombarding the kids who go out and create, every night, new variations on
old traditions—in this case, how kung-fu films inspired a whole new vocabulary of
movement. Hopefully, it will show how dance history can be improved by considering a
wider variety of cultural factors, and investigating how and why they influence dance’s
kinetic and aesthetic development.
For that matter, little has been done in the world of film studies to look at the
impact of either cowboy or kung-fu movies. The development of techniques has been
investigated, as has the development of the industry itself. Scholars, too, have looked
at gender representation, the relationship between good and evil, sexuality, and other
factors in the films themselves. Very few, however, have gone outside the theater to
see how the films influenced audiences, or how viewers interpreted and incorporated
what they had seen on the screen into their lives.
Finally, this work is a starting point for a broader study of hip hop culture in
general. Hip hop’s influence is worldwide, and even more than rock-n-roll or jazz, will
be studied not just as a musical genre, but as a way of life. Hip hop’s ability to reach
across lines of race and class makes it an important historical development, particularly
in the US, where poverty and racism are still problematic. Hip hop history is barely in its
first stages, and work so far has concentrated on its African roots. But in modern
America, nothing stays ‘pure’; influences originating outside the black community played
an important role. Responsible historians must consider them all.
3
THE COWBOY AS AMERICAN HERO
“Hip hop is beautiful to me because it always challenges America’s notion of what they
believe young, disenfranchised people to be.”
-Mos Def1
Since its genesis in New York City in the mid-1970s, hip hop has become the
most influential American cultural form, both in the United States and abroad. More
than just a type of music, hip hop is a complete culture, comprising its own styles of
speech, dance, dress, art, and even philosophy.2 It began as a way of life for kids
growing up in the mean streets of the Bronx; within a generation, it has also become a
multi-billion dollar industry and one of the shaping influences on American life.
Scholarly study of hip hop has boomed in the last ten years, as hip hop’s reach has
spread around the globe, finding its way into the most remote parts of the world.
Traditionally, scholars discussing hip hop’s origins focus on its diasporic African roots,
almost to the willful exclusion of other influences. For instance, the basis of hip hop
dance, known as ‘breaking’ or ‘b-boying,’ is credited most strongly to either Brazilian
capoiera or West African movement styles; rappers are most often compared to African
griots, village storytellers who passed down oral tradition, or Jamaican DJs, known for
‘toasting,’ or speaking brief phrases (“work it!) over the music they played.3
However, attempting to extract any conclusively African threads from the
multivalent milieu in which hip hop arose is a difficult exercise at best. Indeed, the
underappreciated multi-cultural origins contribute significantly to hip hop’s status as
perhaps the most “American” of all art forms to develop in this country. The unique,
appropriative abilities of hip hop gave rise to an inclusive mentality that enabled the
culture to absorb any influence which could develop it further. This is what allowed one
of the most important formative impetuses for early hip hop to be not a survival of
4
African origin, nor a product of the Atlantic exchange of ideas and cultures. Hip hop’s
guiding guru did cross an ocean to reach the New York City incubator, but it was the
Pacific Ocean, and he arrived from Hong Kong: the mystic hero of the Chinese kung-fu
film.
At casual glance, Chinese kung-fu is a form seemingly unrelated to American hip
hop. It is rarely, if ever, mentioned in hip hop studies, and actual investigations of its
influence are absent from the field. Nelson George is one of the few to mention the
impact of kung-fu films on hip hop culture. He points out that kung-fu “provides a
nonwhite, non-Western template for fighting superiority” and that “scores of eager teens
memorized the leg whips, chops, and badly dubbed dialogue.” George’s brief foray into
kung-fu, however, concludes that “kung-fu movies were passé…by 1979” and he
touches on their resurgent popularity in the 1990s before moving on to other topics.4
In the new book That’s The Joint: The Hip-Hop Studies Reader, the first
comprehensive scholarly collection of hip hop articles, kung-fu earns only two mentions.
One is a single line—“Some moves… can be traced to kung-fu movies—which were
immensely popular in the seventies—Playboy magazine, French pantomime, cartoons,
comics, and TV,” in Sally Banes’ hoary-but-seminal 1985 article “Breaking.”5 The
second, and the only discussion meaty enough to merit an index listing, is the final
paragraph of a 1984 essay of the same name by Michael Holman. It is tacked on as an
addendum which can be summed up by his introductory sentence—“Not only
breakdancers, but media stars like Bruce Lee and other Kung Fu film stars and martial
artists had a major influence on breakdancing culture.”6 Surely, if the only influences
Holman sees fit to mention as an equal to kung-fu’s influence on b-boy culture were the
breakers themselves, kung-fu’s importance requires further inquiry.7 Yet before Holman
can even finish his paragraph he derails his kung-fu train of thought for another
stopgap, a three-sentence blurb on Mr. Freeze, “the first white kid to be able to break
well.” Sadly these two references, important evidence of the multicultural construction
of hip hop since its very beginnings, have gone uninvestigated in the ensuing two
decades.
Strange though it may seem, the kung-fu hero was not a completely alien
invader. In many ways, hip hop’s ethos is descended from a long line of American
5
thought and popular culture, and the kung-fu hero filled the most recent role in the
continuum. He met with easy acceptance in this new land because he fulfilled many of
the requirements for heroic status in American culture. The kung-fu hero was
determined, even-handed, righteous, self-reliant, brave, and a defender of the
oppressed. Rather than seeming foreign, the appeal of the kung-fu hero in the US was
both universal and personal, part of a tradition stretching from the mists of prehistory to
his immediate predecessor, the cowboy hero of the Wild West.8
Regardless of location or era, the hero has always held a certain place in culture,
and an appeal attendant to his (or her) position. The archetypal hero has a universal
attraction, and qualities which allow him to persevere and succeed in the face of
seemingly insurmountable odds. One needs to understand the generic qualities of
heroism in order to understand the importance of the kung-fu hero and his role in early
hip hop. As scholar Edward Linenthal wrote, “Revered for the power of his acts and the
mystery of the world he functioned in, the warrior often became a model, embodying the
ideals of a society.”9 The hero exhibits all those traits which a society collectively finds
most appealing and desirable, and he uses those powers in the ways which it deems
most appropriate. Usually this means that the hero performs acts that one feels one
would not have the ability to carry out, lacking the physical strength or personal grit (or
both) necessary to complete the tasks in question.10
That tradition reaches back to western civilization’s earliest tales. Homer’s Iliad
established the paradigm by which all later heroes would be judged. The warriors in the
Iliad were all larger than life, and even those doomed to die have “provided many
generations with heroic models for cultural ideals and standards.” Achilles’ “value as a
cultural hero does not lie solely in his physical triumph. . .but in the conscious decision
to carry out a heroic deed, realizing it will cost him his life.”11 Some duties are more
important than self-preservation, and one of the hallmarks of the hero is his willingness
and ability to sacrifice himself in pursuit of a higher ideal.12
One of the most important of those ideals is encompassed in the Greek arête,
the single most important element of Greek character. In the heroic context, it is often
translated as “a combination of proud and courtly morality, and warlike valor,”13 and with
arête comes an obligation to be brave and live up to that potential.14 But in a broader
6
context, arête also means “knowledge.” In a sense, then, arête is a concept which
requires a constant striving for self-improvement, a quest to realize and perform at one’s
highest human potential. Heroic tales commonly revolve around physical journeys with
good reason—because the very process of becoming a hero requires effort, change,
and advancement. In The Hero With a Thousand Faces, Joseph Campbell concurs
that the physical-movement leitmotif is actually a search for expansion of
consciousness— events on the journey “represent psychological, not physical,
triumphs….The passage of the mythological hero may be overground, incidentally;
fundamentally, it is inward.”15 The bodily travels parallel the mental distances that must
be traversed.
In the United States, the hero has usually been portrayed as a lone wanderer,
finding the purpose of life on a journey on the American frontier: Daniel Boone, Natty
Bumppo, Davy Crockett, and innumerable incarnations of the western cowboy.16
Colonel Daniel Boone was the first character to arise as an American version of “the
archetypal hero, [who] begins in a state of innocence or unawareness of the powers that
are latent in himself and in his environment.” First appearing in John Filson’s 1784 work
The Discovery, Settlement, and Present State of Kentucke (sic), and further popularized
by the publication of the excerpted Adventures of Colonel Daniel Boon(sic), “Filson's
Boone narrative fits the archetype rather closely.”17 Boone was the Olympian
forefather, the immortal progenitor of the American hero. But as with most origin-myths,
it was his descendants around whom the story would really focus. It is the “stoic,
isolated” cowboy character, wildly popular for the first half of the twentieth century, to
whom one must turn in order to find the direct predecessor to the kung fu hero.18
The cowboy arose as a hero in American popular culture at a time when the
country was wondering where society would next turn. The 1890 census had just
declared the American frontier closed, and the ramifications of that fact had yet to be
determined. Three years later, historian Frederick Jackson Turner delivered his seminal
essay on “The Significance of the Frontier in American History,” and posited that it was
the American frontier to which the development of a uniquely American experience must
be attributed. He emphasized that the “perennial rebirth” of reconfronting the
challenges of building a life as the frontier boundary moved in fits and starts, “this fluidity
7
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.”19 Although his essay did not immediately cause a stir in the American
populace, he had tapped into a broadly-held sentiment: the American frontier,
increasingly distilled into a vision of the American West, was a romantic, wild land
where our nationally-cherished virtues of independence, strength, intelligence, and an
underlying stubborn streak were most readily able to flourish.
His essay has endured, and become one of the pillars of American historical
thought, and of our national imagination and identity. Attitudes and approaches have
changed over the years, and some scholars feel that Turner’s thesis is outdated; in
particular, historians studying minority and women’s issues have railed against him.20
One of the most influential critics is Patricia Nelson Limerick. Her revisionist 1988 work,
The Legacy of Conquest, helped to shape a New Western history, with a focus on the
multicultural nature of the American west. She stressed the need to look outside
Turner’s ethnocentric view, and incorporate the numerous non-Anglo inhabitants into
studies of the region. Significantly for this study, she brought African-Americans and
Asians into the discussion. Thus she points out not only the historical presence of those
groups in the west, but helps to demonstrate that African- and Latin-Americans’
embrace of the cowboy/kung-fu hero had a century-old precedent.21
But clearly Turner’s ideas remain important, as even those scholars who
disagree with him continue to engage the Frontier Thesis in their work. What the test of
time has clearly shown, though, is that, issues of inclusiveness and factuality aside,
Turner had a firm grasp on the significance of the frontier in American mythology.
Limerick and company’s turn to a New Western history may have resulted in a more
accurate study of America’s past, but they have missed a vital element of Turner’s
ideas. In their effort to move the study of the west from a shifting civilization-line to a
specific, regional history, they largely abandon the idea of the frontier. Looked at as a
liminal concept, the ‘frontier’ can be geographically anywhere—the mountains, the sea,
the desert, the city—any place where individuals confront the unknown. It is an area
where, in order to survive, people have to reach into themselves, adapt to new
situations, and find the fortitude to triumph. The ‘frontiersman,’ in his various
8
incarnations, is a character to whom Americans look to find a hero, a man with arête,
battling the forces of nature and man arrayed against him. He constantly pushes
onward, alone, in a quest to make the territory safer, more just, more open, and more
equitable for those who come behind him.
But why should the cowboy have come to be the singular example of the
American hero? What was it that made him more desirable than other strong American
characters? The reasons that a hero comes to be regarded as such are sundry and
varied, dependent largely on the circumstances from which he arises. There were
many contemporary candidates for canonization as the American hero: the
swashbuckling adventurer (John Smith, John Paul Jones), the intrepid explorer (Lewis
and Clark), the lumberjack (Paul Bunyan), the mountain man (Boone, Davy Crockett), or
the soldier (who arose in a slightly different incarnation after every American conflict).
It was the cowboy, however, who was adopted as the supreme representative of
the heroic ideal, and whose image has endured. Perhaps that was because he
operated under the set of circumstances that held the broadest appeal. He lived and
adventured in the mystical “Great American West,” a mysterious place, far away even to
those who (geographically) lived there. It was a boundless land, uncontrolled by man
and unshaped by the forces of human society. Each of his challengers had some
reason that kept them from achieving the same heights, and being accorded the same
respect and awe, as the cowboy. The sailor, for example, had the trackless sea as his
domain, but had to rely on his shipmates for success. The explorer and the mountain
man had both operated in a lonely theater; although rugged, brave, and self-reliant, they
did not have the necessary villains against whom to compete and thereby realize their
“highest human potential.” Paul Bunyan, like G.I. Joe, was located in too specific a
setting, and outside of their normal environs, their respective qualities lost some of their
impact.
Perhaps the strongest contender as a revisioning of Filson’s archetype was the
rugged hunter and Indian fighter Natty Bumppo from James Fenimore Cooper’s The
Leatherstocking Tales, but it was not just his position as a scout for the British army that
prevented the man known as “Hawkeye” from becoming the template for American
heroes. Cooper’s writing in many ways laid a foundation for the cowboy role, and “the
9
life cycle of the cowboy story can be viewed as beginning with Cooper’s work….”
Although his paradigm of “the noble hero confronting society” had a lasting impact on
American imagination, his version of events soon lost their currency. Alf H. Walle
demonstrates that “Cooper’s forceful portrayal of the ‘great American desert’ as a
hinterland where society could not establish itself, for example, proved to be in error,
and by the 1890s everyone was aware of his errors.” Cooper had portrayed his hero as
the quintessential American individualist, being pushed westward by a “European-styled
culture inevitably establishing itself in the New World and displacing distinctively
American people” such as Bumppo. Within a few decades after the Civil War, however,
the American public, heeding the call of such works as Ralph Waldo Emerson’s “The
American Scholar,” was embracing the idea of America as a unique and vital civilization,
worthy of respect. 22
Cooper’s vision of an America aspiring to become a pale reflection of stagnant
Europe held little appeal to this new mindset. In his summary of the failure of Cooper’s
heroic model to become the paradigm, Walle reports that the “prevailing view that
Americans possessed a positive and productive uniqueness” was closely tied to
American intellectual and social elites’ struggle for “parity with their European
cousins….” Cooper undercut these groups’ efforts to achieve equality in European
circles, Walle continues, because he depicted Bumppo the frontiersman, paragon of
America, as “incapable of effectively interacting with society and… inevitably displaced
by it….” In order for Americans to be equal, or superior, to their European rivals, they
needed to “transcend Cooper’s vision of the true American as a rather pathetic vestigial
remain being pushed aside by the advance of civilization.” The story of the frontier, as
written by Cooper—an exceptional America withering under the cultural weight of Old
World influence—fell into decline “because it conflicted with the emerging worldview of
the American public.”23 Compounded with other developments in the latter part of the
nineteenth century, the ailing Bumppo was abandoned by the trailside.
Americans continued to define themselves in relation to the power of nature, and
the potential for self-realization and growth in an independent life, away from the hustle
and bustle of civilization. 24 That appeal grew when they were confronted with a rapidlyindustrializing society in the years following the Civil War. Turner’s thesis had asserted,
10
in contrast to Cooper’s vision, that it was the very frontier nature of American life that
had given rise to the qualities that made the American character unique, summing up
the growing contention that the United States was not aspiring to emulate, but to
surpass, the “courtly muses of Europe.”25 The Frontier Thesis, then, in allowing
Americans to escape their feelings of inferiority and subservience to the Old World,
“caught the imagination of American intellectuals and, for all practical purposes, it was
embraced as an origin myth regarding American character and civilization.”26 An origin
myth is a vital element in the repertoire of a culture’s hero-makers. The attribution of
mythological origins provides a fundamental explanation of a hero’s ability to transcend
the normal mortals around him and assume a superhuman stature. Turner’s
philosophical, academic lecture had to be distilled, and reduced to its mythological
essentials, before it would hold a lasting appeal for the American public.
Owen Wister was the man to bridge this gap. In his novel The Virginian (1902),
he purged aspects of Cooper’s vision, welded the remains to Turner’s theory, and
forged America’s first enduring heroic archetype. An interesting fact is that, considering
it is the work to which the cowboy myth owes its greatest debt, there is none of the
cattle-working associated with the historical cowboy; roping cows and Indian-fighting are
“alluded to proleptically and after the fact but never represented directly.”27 About more
than the specific components of cowboying, The Virginian is really a tale that created a
new attitude, a new lifestyle; it is the creation myth of a founding hero.
Of the changes Wister wrought, perhaps the most significant to this study was his
use of Turner’s ideas to insist “that the individualist personality type born of the frontier
gained personal prowess…Wister suggested that once this character had been
developed, this personality type could leave the wilds and succeed in a modern, urban
world”28; the kung-fu hero would later undertake the same journey, leaving the place of
his training and upbringing to test himself in the city streets of China. Wister, like Hong
Kong directors, was aware that the largest potential audience for his works lay,
obviously, in cities. Wister’s decision to send “The Virginian” back to city life in the East
built a bridge between his hero and his audience. In doing so, he anticipated the
romantic idolization that would be accorded the frontier hero by urban audiences
throughout the twentieth century (although it would ebb a bit in the latter decades). He
11
gave city dwellers unfamiliar with life on a dude ranch, much less on the “real,” mythical
frontier, the comforting assurance that they, too, could possess a bit of the frontier
character, even in their humdrum, workaday lives, an assurance that helped them feel
connected to the hero.
Additionally, he used a protagonist who was mired in anonymity; he is known by
no name, simply as “The Virginian.” In so doing, Wister created not a hero, an
“idiosyncratic individual,” but a heroic archetype.29 It was not “Daniel Boone,” or “Paul
Bunyan,” or “Natty Bumppo/Hawkeye”—it was “The Virginian,” or more generally, “The
Cowboy.” Not naming his character enabled countless followers to draw upon the
Virginian’s aura without copying a specific character. This trend would continue even
after the cowboy rode off of the printed page and onto the silver screen. Cowboy actors
gained legions of fans—Tom Mix, Will Rogers, Roy Rogers, John Wayne—but the role
of movie cowboy-hero never became the province of a single character. The closest to
come to that status was Hopalong Cassidy. Really, though, Hopalong too was viewed
not as a character, but as the alter-ego of actor Bill Boyd. Boyd played Hopalong in
sixty-five films in the 1930s and 1940s, most of which were converted into one-hour
television episodes in the 1950s, but when Boyd retired, Hopalong retired with him.30
Even the Lone Ranger and Zorro, two of the other major serialized cowboy-hero
characters, were “anonymous” behind their masks.
Wister’s work, then, provided the foundation for a generic heroic model, a
nameless template upon whom other authors could inscribe their details. And inscribe
they did. One of the most successful was Zane Grey, who built upon Wister’s model
beginning with his first novel, Betty Zane, published in 1903. Although it was not a
commercial success, he never looked back. By his fifth book, 1912’s Riders of the
Purple Sage, which would go on to become the best-selling Western novel in history, he
had found his groove. He published top-ten selling books each year from 1917 to 1924,
and sold twelve million copies by 1936. Fifty years and 85 books later (he left an
unpublished catalogue of over twenty novels at his death in 1939), his sales had
surpassed 130 million worldwide. More importantly for the cowboy’s establishment as a
cultural hero, over one hundred movie adaptations have been made of his works.31
12
Grey’s writings were by no means alone in their transferal to the movie screen.
The Virginian was adapted as early as 1914, the year before D.W. Griffiths’ Birth of a
Nation revolutionized movie-making, and western films caught on from the very
beginning. “Americans,” Walle reminds us, “still believed that they could determine their
own destiny and they were unwilling to openly confront the fact that they had little
control over their lives.” Westerns were perfect escapist fantasy, not just for adults, but
for children who had to live under the “law” of their parents. The cowboy was an
independent, “individualist hero [who] could remain moral and victorious.”32
Commercially-minded producers and directors had come to the same realization as
Grey, that people “wanted [to] see virtue triumph and vice downed. In a word they
long[ed] to see that life is not hopeless—to see chivalry in men and chastity in women,
to see the struggle for good against evil, to prove the truth of friendship, kinship, honor,
and God.”33 They wanted a hero, and this recipe helps to explain how the kung-fu hero,
introduced to the world of the cowboy in the person of David Carradine’s character in
the Kung Fu TV series, Kwai Chang Caine, found a toehold on American shores.
The cowboy was able to meet all the expectations of a hero, and flourish.
Although he at times cooperated with others in his efforts, he was beholden to no man.
At any time, he could whistle for his trusty horse, climb astride its powerful back, and
ride off into the great unknown, to find, well, whatever it was he found.
And although
a loner, he did not avoid people—there was always the cattle-rustler to hunt down, the
homesteading family to defend from greedy bankers or malicious marauders, the
stagecoach to save, the stampede to stop, and the ever-present prairie damsel-indistress to protect from her particular peril, whatever shape it may have taken. He
performed his chosen tasks out of arête, not for rewards from the town or kisses from
the girl. There were wrongs to be righted, and righting wrongs was what heroes did.
The independence of his lifestyle enabled him to flex and fully explore the heroic
characteristics valued by American culture. Operating independently on the primitive
frontier, he owed allegiance to no one, and arête only obligated him to follow the
directives of his pure, heroic, cowboy heart.
The cinema cowboy rode the ranges of the American West and survived by
relying on his wits, creativity, physical strength, and mental fortitude. He was a self-
13
sufficient leader who followed his own ethical code, and often gave priority to the pursuit
of subjective ‘goodness’ instead of a rigidly-defined concept of ‘law.’ In his investigation
of the western as an expression of American culture, Jeffrey Wallmann wrote,
“Commonly, westerns…pit infallible institutional law against a higher moral
law...westerns thrive on the duality of justice and injustice—on the issue of fairness,
really—because the political structures of laws, regulations, and enforcement always
inject tension, if only because of the diverse reactions to adversity.”34 In this light, the
cowboy hero represents humanity before our life was formally structured by the
pressures of society.
He is free, physically and psychologically, from the bonds that tie those who
idolize him to their daily existences. He is able to ignore the technical details of
modern-day legality for the primordial sense of ‘what just feels right in his gut,’ and
remind the rest of us that “the common man must stand up for” his rights and the rights
of others, and “he must rally behind those strong-willed individuals who refuse to be
exploited, who will not surrender their rights or stand by idly while others are inveigled to
do so.”35 As a hero, he provides an alternative to the potential pitfalls of a too-easilycorrupted bureaucracy, hypocritical religions, greedy businessmen, and malevolent
villains.
It becomes essentially, as Wallmann points out, a struggle of the Law of Nature
versus the Law of Man:
[in addition to the] Justice/Injustice duality, it also incorporates the
duality of Individual and Community. American culture values early
independence, encouraging self-reliance in infants, and tolerating
adolescent rebellion well beyond the norm that prevails in other
cultures. In the effort to be more fully one’s own person American
culture cherishes three things in particular—mobility, privacy, and
convenience—which are the very sources of a lack of community.
In this case, community does not refer to a place, to the spot where
we live, but to where we find ‘a sense of community’ among people
who know us, with whom we feel connected and safe.36
From Wallmann’s conclusions, there is a connection to be made about why the cowboy
movies, and their ideological descendants, the Chinese kung-fu films of the latter half of
the twentieth century, held such a firm grasp on the imagination of young Americans.
14
Several authors have shown that westerns’ primary audience was children, and
that the films—particularly the popular Saturday matinee double-features—were “a
standard rite of male adolescence.”37 In an American culture that places a high value
on independent thought and individuality—the continuous remonstrations against
succumbing to peer pressure—youth are encouraged to question certain accepted
norms. Indeed, the emphasis on being sure to do what they feel is ‘right,’ combined
with tolerated (read: expected) adolescent rebellion, results in what amounts to an
obligation to rebel. Yet at the same time, they continually confront authority figures
(parental, educational, governmental) who discipline them for overstepping the bounds
they are told to challenge.
Therein lies the essence of these movies’ appeal. The film hero, too, has his
own moral compass, what David Riesman termed an “inner-directed” personality,
pointing toward goals the hero chose for himself.38 “Inner-directed” personalities follow
their own decisions, as opposed to “tradition-directed” people, who feel bound by the
behavior of those who have come before them, and “other-directed” personalities, who,
predictably, allow the opinions of others, and their own personal need for acceptance, to
continually redetermine their goals. Warren Susman, in Culture as History, had his own
interpretation of Riesman’s ideas. Susman found that, between the nineteenth and
twentieth centuries—that is, between the time of the cowboy hero’s setting and the time
in which his audiences lived—American culture had shifted from an emphasis on
character to an emphasis on personality. Character meant adherence to the ideals of
integrity and duty; personality was a popularity contest, the ability to make friends and
impress people, often at the expense of one’s instinctual behavior.39
But cowboy audiences, and later those who followed the kung-fu hero, found
these films appealing because they evoked a time when an individual was expected,
and praised, for living according to his or her own directives, without being expected to
bow to the pressures of modern consumer culture. Youth longed for a period when
individualism was rewarded, and found it in films of the cowboy and kung-fu heroes.
The cowboy hero, like the kung-fu hero, frequently finds his compass steering him away
from the regimented requirements of society, and cannot—or will not—bend to those
expectations, at the expense of making things how he thinks they ought to be. Mobile,
15
private, and self-determining, he is free of the fetters of traditional ‘community,’ but
because of that, he is free to use whatever means he deems appropriate to help those
he finds deserving. It does not hurt his appeal that he always turns out to be right in the
end, victorious and vindicated by the results of his actions. For a young person
struggling with the uncertainties of growing up, this is escapist fantasy at its best, as the
hero is rewarded and admired for being “a law unto himself.”40
These qualities made, and continue to make, the cowboy resonate with groups
besides children, however. The same characteristics—resistance, self-reliance,
strength, bravery—that made the cowboy hero a favorite of children also brought him
admiration from groups whose oppression was more sinister than a child chafing under
his parents’ control. Primary among these groups in the early days of the western film
were African-American audiences, who “enthusiastically supported the cowboy stars.”41
One of the first to write on the connection between black audiences and the cowboy
hero of western films was Howard University sociologist William H. Jones. In his 1927
study, Recreation and Amusement among Negroes in Washington, D.C.; a sociological
analysis of the Negro in an urban environment, Jones discussed the appeal of a strong,
righteous hero to the “rough class of people” living and working in American cities in the
first decades of the twentieth century. Black film scholar Pearl Bowser, on the other
hand, has written on the connection between cowboy heroes and African-American
audiences in small-town and neighborhood theaters. Regularly-appearing actors such
as William S. Hart and Tom Mix (cowboy stars of the silent-film era) had legions of loyal
followers who came to see them regardless of the film, because of the type of character
they always played. An unidentified theater manager in a 1928 Variety review of Mix’s
Daredevil’s Reward said he never worried about profiting on a Mix film, because all he
had to do was “put Mix’s name out front and they come back like prodigal sons. There’s
affection and trust in their eyes again when they lay down their dough.”42
Studying the same connections, historian Stanley Coben has hypothesized that
black audiences found resonance in westerns’ “retention of Victorian ideals and social
arrangements.” Coben locates the root of the African-American admiration of the
cowboy hero in the quasi-religious nature of his morality, duty, and obligation.43 Later,
as cowboys lost these elements in the years following the outbreak of the Vietnam War,
16
important audience groups—children, minorities—drifted away from the genre.
Disillusioned by the imperial nature of US forces abroad killing native peoples, an eyeopening parallel to the treatment of Native Americans and African-Americans in the US,
black audiences’ urge to leave the Wild West was aided by the sixties emphasis on
multiculturalism, and the increased tolerance of other peoples. To fill the heroic void left
by the decline of the western, they would look even farther west, to Hong Kong.
But in the twenties, the noble qualities of the cowboy were still very much in
effect. Over the next few decades, and after the advent of sound created new stars
(Hart, Mix, and many others struggled with, and ultimately failed to make, the transition
to “talkies”), westerns continued to build a relationship with minority groups. Jim Hitt
points out that The Mark of Zorro (1940) was a crucial binding point, as writers began to
show more concern for the downtrodden, often non-Anglo peasants, which may have
“mirrored the concern of liberal and left-wing writers over the Spanish Civil War.”44 An
interesting twist on the standard western, the Zorro films focused on the humanistic,
albeit aristocratic, title character’s defense of the native inhabitants of Mexico/California
from an alien, elitist government.
Clearly operating from within the heroic cowboy mold, Zorro (alter-ego of effete
socialite Don Diego de la Vega) gallops up on his trusty black steed Toronado, and
“delivers an important message to the audience: Hedonistic rule, or the subjugation of a
people with no regard for their well-being, can be overcome by those who have the
courage and wit to pull it off.”45 While the argument could be made that Zorro turned the
natives he was defending into helpless, passive creatures awaiting salvation by an
enlightened aristocrat, one must bear in mind that it was not the dapper Don Diego de la
Vega who was doing the rescuing. Instead, in his disguise as Zorro, he was a
mysterious hero who simply showed up in their times of need and battled the evil
government forces of the alcalde.
He championed the poor, but with his aristocratic status concealed by his everpresent mask, he did not patronize them. The film’s writers were intent on making the
point that it was not his social status that gave him the strength and ability to fight, but
rather the social conditions under which the natives were living. The Mark of Zorro
begins with the statement “Oppression—by its very nature—creates the power that
17
crushes it. A champion arises—the champion of the oppressed.”46 In the Zorro series,
there is the foreshadowing of an important transition in the western film, to a focus on
the plight and rights of the natives persecuted by an encroaching foreign presence.
Although westerns still praised heroic American virtue in the Turnerian sense—
James Agee’s review of 1947’s The Unconquered described it as “a celebration of Gary
Cooper’s virility…and the American Frontier Spirit”47—by the 1950’s the shift seen in
The Mark of Zorro would solidify around the “Cult of the Indian.” Shaped by post-World
War II concerns about “the difference between the racism of the Nazis and the
Japanese and the supposed tolerance of the democracies,” studios produced a growing
number of movies in which Native Americans were presented sympathetically. Further
influenced by the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s, the new films were cinematic
precursors of Limerick’s multicultural west. They looked outside the benevolent roles
traditionally granted to white males in westerns and emphasized “the culpability of
Whites in starting and perpetuating hostilities.”48 Clearly, this period of the western era
continued to build on the appeal to minority audiences, as the increased focus on
oppressed peoples as righteous resisters combined with developments in the cultural
arena.
Westerns confronted the challenges of reconciling the frontier, racism, and ideals
of American heroism, even under the looming threat of the McCarthy Era. Studying the
“myth of the frontier in twentieth-century America,” Richard Slotkin observes:
The Western was a safe haven for liberals, because its
identification with the heroic fable of American progress covered its
practitioners with a presumption of patriotism that was essential in
Hollywood during the…’Red Scare.’ Because it was safely ‘in the
past,’ the tale of White-Indian conflict and peace-making allowed
filmmakers to raise questions of war and peace and to entertain the
possibility of coexistence without the kind of scrutiny to which a film
set in or near the present would have drawn. Moreover, the same
setting would allow them to address the race questions without
offending southern sensibilities.49
Screenwriters and directors skirted the issues which would attract the attention of
McCarthy and his disciples, but audiences were able to immediately detect the
allegorical relevance of these historically presented struggles. The depiction of these
new protagonists, as native, traditional inhabitants who had “acute senses, belief in
18
omens, stoicism, custom, intense tribal pride, and harsh virtues,” must have magnified
their connection to an African-American community well aware of its own unique history
when confronted by white foreigners. 50
Even with the changes occurring in the people playing the roles of hero and
villain, the fundamental structure of the films had not undergone any marked change
since the early days of the genre. Equally significant was the fact the their popularity
had not waned among their primary audience: “Westerns of the 1930’s, 40’s, and 50’s
did not depart significantly from the patterns set by the original…shoot-em-ups….The
Saturday western matinee continued to be a defining entertainment experience for
another generation of young men.”51 However, this statement only applies to their
overall plot. As the popularity of westerns continued during this era and an increasing
amount of stories had to be produced, some elements which had aided in the appeal of
the films began to disappear from the scripts.
In her book West of Everything: The Inner Life of Westerns, Jane P. Tompkins
noted that, as westerns were more consciously aimed towards their youthful audiences
(who presumably just liked the action) and “filmmakers began to emphasize western
stars’ athleticism, moral and psychological battles became less prevalent in the
genre.”52 The Indian turn did not reverse this trend either, as the action of the open
struggle between two opposing groups left little room for the solitude necessary for the
personal growth and internal struggle around which so much of the earlier movies had
been built.
Meanwhile, during the middle decade of the century, another genre of films was
challenging the western dominance of the action screen. Capitalizing on the rampant
growth and prosperity of the United States in the years following World War II and
American involvement in Korea, war films began a brief period of popularity. Western
movies were struggling with competition from westerns on the small screen, more
readily and more frequently available to the public, and the successes of the American
military created another hero to whom moviegoers turned. The cowboy era was
increasingly seen as the distant past, and the liberating, anti-communist GI was
portrayed as a modern example of the best the United States had to offer.
19
War films never completely displaced the cowboy, however; his mythological
significance to the American mind was too firmly established by this time. He
represented too many things to too many different groups. For American minorities
increasingly aware of their tenuous, unequal position in the United States, the war films’
depictions of battalions of armed white soldiers shooting down natives in foreign lands
held little appeal. Looked at in depth, the war films were really only early cowboy
movies, often the worst of them from the standpoint of an oppressed group, repackaged
in modern costumes. With the “closing of the frontier” now unavoidable by all but the
most vivid imaginations—even the cowboy films were being made in suburbs of the
growing metropolis of Los Angeles—war films had simply shifted the physical frontier
from the American west to the various theaters of war around the world, where once
again American gunmen were clearing the land for civilization. But the popularity of war
films quickly waned again, because of the renaissance of traditional westerns.
By the middle of the 1960’s, the struggle between television and silver screen
cowboys for viewers had resolved itself. “The genre’s popularity in one medium
reinforced its appeal in the other…After 1962, big screen productions revived to levels
comparable with 1950-55 [the prior peak of western movies], and this rise was matched
by a second surge of western productions on TV in the mid-sixties.”53 War movies did
not have enough universal appeal, or unique elements, to withstand this tide. The
western was again home on the range, but, as shown earlier, the dynamic had shifted.
The cowboy continued to move in a nebulous world between all-American hero, fighting
the villains of the west in whatever form they came, and flawed frontiersman, attempting
to cope in retrospect with the legacy of oppression and poverty he bequeathed to Native
Americans. The concern for the native population of the United States was
accompanied by a growing national awareness of the plight of disenfranchised or
alienated groups on the margins of America the 1960’s: the counterculture, the
traditional Civil Rights Movement, NOW and other women’s groups, and increasingly
vocal—and militant—Black and Red Power organizations.
The western rebirth was short-lived, however. Although the cowboy had
momentarily risen from the dust like a lariat-toting Lazarus, “the halcyon days began to
wane at the end of the 1960’s, as the Vietnam War, racial crises, ghetto turmoil, political
20
assassination, and the Watergate scandal led to national anger and even despair.
Traditional westerns no longer meshed with widely accepted social and political views of
the time.”54 Turner’s old frontier thesis, ironically, became an added threat to the newlyadopted role of the “Cult of the Indian” period westerns, which was sympathizing with an
oppressed people struggling against an invading foreign government/society.
In his 1960 speech accepting the Democratic nomination for the Presidency,
John F. Kennedy had announced his vision for a “New Frontier.” The New Frontier,
echoing the now-mythological themes of Turner’s original, was to address “unsolved
problems of peace and war, unconquered pockets of ignorance and prejudice,
unanswered questions of poverty and surplus.” As Slotkin has pointed out, “For
Kennedy and his advisers, the choice of the Frontier as symbol was not simply a device
for trade-marking the candidate. It was an authentic metaphor…a complexly resonant
symbol, a vivid and memorable set of hero-tales—each a model of successful and
morally justifying action on the stage of historical conflict.”55 Once again, Turner’s
assumptions about the frontier were being used to explain the uniqueness of the
American experience, and the weight of the duty that Providence had placed upon the
country.
The American public, now well-versed in the Frontier Thesis by their cowboy
coaches, quickly picked up on the idea. Indeed, by the end of the decade, “American
troops would be describing Vietnam as ‘Indian country’ and search-and-destroy
missions as a game of ‘Cowboys and Indians,’ and Kennedy’s ambassador to Vietnam
would justify a massive military escalation by citing the necessity of moving the ‘Indians’
away from the ‘fort’ so that the ‘settlers’ could plant ‘corn.’”56 Kennedy’s successor,
Texas rancher-turned-President Lyndon Baines Johnson, fit the role well. In his cowboy
hat and boots, he entertained dignitaries with “barbeque diplomacy” at his ranch.
Johnson embraced a “mythologized rural America,” and that vision extended from his
ranch to his administration and worldview.57 But with the shift of the frontier from the
West to the Far East came a shift in interest as well. An American public with an
increasingly acute social awareness was no longer blindly following its leaders into
battle with the Indians.
21
Mindful of the potential dangers for native peoples when “sending in the
cavalry,” society at large, and the various countercultural groups in particular, began a
dialogue with the peoples of Asia. Disaffected hippies found direction in the gurus of
India, and The Beatles went there for inspiration. The radical Left, angry at the
oppression and social control they saw in US government tactics, found compatriots in
Vietnam and Mao’s Cultural Revolution. Celebrities like Jane Fonda spoke out against
US actions in Vietnam; she married radical Tom Hayden and they traveled to North
Vietnam together.58 Returning Vietnam veterans, black and white, brought Asian
influences home with them. Many had met the kung-fu hero, and established martial
arts schools when they returned—black veterans in inner cities in particular.59
Bombarded with news about Vietnam, very aware (even if not supportive) of the moral
and ethical issues being raised by the conflict, many Americans found their interest in—
and sympathy for—Asia rising.
The first important popular-culture connection between the United States
and Asia is Bruce Lee. His role as Kato, the Chinese chauffeur/sidekick in the shortlived television action series The Green Hornet (1966-67),60 had made him an
underground star, but it was his first feature film, Fists of Fury (aka The Big Boss),
released in the United States in 1971, which vaulted him into the American mainstream.
There was an instant connection with an American public accustomed to the struggles
of the cowboy hero, but wary of the ramifications of the historical facts surrounding the
slaughter necessary to create that mythical figure.
But Lee’s film, in many ways, picked up where the “Cult of the Indian” left
off, and established a loose framework for many films that followed. Lee’s character,
Cheng Cho-An, is a country boy who goes to work in an ice-packing plant in Thailand (a
“frontier land” far from his home). Once there, he discovers that the plant is a front for a
heroin-smuggling operation, and a powerful one at that (evil men operating under the
cover of legitimate, “legal” business). Although greatly disturbed by this, he refrains
from combating the evil, having promised his mother that he would not fight. Eventually
though, as his coworkers and friends continue to mysteriously disappear, his righteous
anger boils forth in a surge of violence, and he destroys the smuggling operation.
22
That basic plot structure shares similarities with many “outlaw” westerns which,
much like Zorro, had a problem with the status quo but required an extra impetus before
they would act on their feelings. Similarly, in The Mark of Zorro, de le Vega springs into
action not just because of the threat to the natives but in defense of his father. Yet
another good example of this subgenre is 1939’s Jesse James, starring Tyrone Power
and directed by Henry King. Power’s quasi-historical (mythic?) Jesse James is a
homesteader upset by the corrupt business connections between local authorities and
representatives of the railroad being built through town.61 Influenced by the popular
gangster films of the 1930’s—in which the gangsters, operating under their own version
of the cowboy’s moral code, battled the forces of law and became heroic themselves—
Jesse James and other outlaw westerns questioned “the easy equation of material and
moral progress and, and [saw] corruption as the necessary adjunct of America’s rise to
economic heights.”62 The outlaw versions of the cowboy hero in these films, though,
needed more than the abstract presence of moral decay before they could reach their
highest human potential.
In Jesse James, this came in the form of the murder of his mother by railroad
goons sent to drive his family off their property, which the railroad needed. Finding her
dead, James hunts down Barshee, the head of the railroad gang, and kills him in the
obligatory western show-down. The James gang then goes on their famous crime
spree, which in the context of the film is aimed exclusively at the railroad and its assets.
In an attempt to erase its insidious influence on the pure people of the frontier prairie
town, “Jesse’s attack…[is] a defense (or at least an avenging) of the principles of justice
and civility that law was created to protect.” In using the death of James’ mother as the
final straw, “King …provides Jesse with a double justification for becoming an outlaw.
The initial impulse is given by a confrontation with the railroad and the law it has
corrupted. But the crucial shift from legal resistance to rebellion or guerrilla warfare is
motivated by” a slight or wrong against the family, thereby personalizing the struggle,
much as Lee’s character in Fists of Fury does not act until his friends (in the role of
extended family) have been harmed.63
The kung-fu/cowboy link was more explicitly established with the premier of the
television series Kung Fu. The idea originated with a short story by series creator Ed
23
Spielman about a Japanese samurai, in which a Shaolin monk played a minor part.
When co-writer Howard Friedlander read the story, he was drawn to the monk
character. Friedlander realized right away the potential for the monk. He recalls, “I
turned to Ed, and I said, ‘Ed, it’s a western! It’s a western. The Shaolin monk! Bring
him to the west, it’s a western.’ And his mouth just dropped open and he realized that
was it.” Spielman and Friedlander wrote a new tale, with the Shaolin character as the
focus, and unwittingly added a new mythology to American culture.64
Starring David Carradine as half-American, half-Chinese monk Kwai Chang
Caine, Kung Fu introduced a new hero to the western world. Caine was trained in the
Shaolin temple, but was forced to flee China for America after killing the Emperor’s
nephew, who had shot and killed Caine’s teacher, Master Po. Once Caine arrives in
this country, he learns he has a half-brother. The show then revolves around his search
for his lost brother, while dodging assassins and bounty hunters in pursuit of the deador-alive reward offered by the Emperor. In the meantime, he wanders the west, helping
his oppressed Chinese countrymen who are here to build the railroad (again,
questioning the price of progress) and others who find themselves beset by various evil
forces. In the pilot movie, Caine is told that the temple had “never accepted anyone of
other than full Chinese birth…There is a first for everything.”65 Caine was one of the
first kung-fu heroes in the United States, but he would be far from the last.
To a populace tiring of the bloody “Cowboys and Indians” games of American
cinema, the arrival of a “peaceful man in a violent land” was welcome.66 The late 1969
reports in Time of the US Army atrocities during the My Lai massacre had sounded the
death knell for the western as a genre.67 Many Americans were no longer willing to
overlook the atrocities visited on native peoples in order to expand the frontier.
Confronted with the bloody reality of a superior force sweeping everything before it, they
realized the necessary similarities to the reality of the conquering of the west. The
hideously graphic scene enacted at My Lai was a fight from which the cowboy hero
returned mortally wounded, and no amount of snake-oil or bravery could help him
survive.
The standard western obviously could not endure. But the cowboy climbed back
on his horse one more time, and “in the wake of the My Lai…Hollywood attempted the
24
revision of a genre [that] had become too predictable, and that predictably was identified
with the symbolism of a ‘bad war.’ The westerns produced in 1970-72 are marked by
ambitious attempts at formal, thematic, and ideological innovation.” Films such as
Soldier Blue and Little Big Man in particular tried to continue the genre by shifting the
focus to Native Americans, and sympathize with the victims of Vietnam by forming a
“New Cult of the Indian.” It was a short-lived effort, though, and “despite some critical
and commercial successes, the ‘alternative’ western did not survive the end of the
war.”68
It should not be surprising. The western was supported primarily by a youthful
audience, and as the movie industry attempted to deal with the very adult, social issues
raised in the 1960’s and early 1970’s, punctuated by stories such as My Lai, those
youth rode off into the sunset, like their cowboy heroes of old. Fortunately, just over the
next ridge, they met Caine, a transitional character who introduced American youth to
his extended family. In the years to follow, Chinese heroes—acting out many of the
moral battles stressed in westerns—would swarm the screens of America, soon
becoming a new Saturday afternoon rite of passage.
By the mid-1970’s, author James Horwitz, while working on They Went
Thataway, his autobiographical-cum-scholarly investigation of the impact of the western
on American youth, would have to travel to Paris to see western double-features in
broken-down movie theaters, part of a round-the-clock cycle known as Le Festival
Western. In the US theaters of his fondly-remembered youth, the western had been
displaced by kung-fu films, with a fresh, Sinicized version of the cowboy hero. But even
abroad, Horwitz was aware of kung-fu’s growing popularity. He lamented that by the
time of the 1976 publication of his book, he “expect[ed]…they have closed down Le
Festival Western in Paris. Replaced it with Le Festival Kung Fu….”69 He was probably
right; the simple arête for which westerns’ traditional audiences hungered had
disappeared, and they found a more than adequate replacement in the imported Hong
Kong kung-fu productions.
25
KUNG-FU INVADERS
Before Kung Fu, I’d never heard of Chinese martial arts, of the Shaolin Temple, of
Buddhism and warrior monks.
-Jackie Chan 70
These Hong Kong imports were not a new creation made simply to fill the void
left by westerns, however. The kung-fu films of the early 1970’s had evolved from fifty
years of Chinese cinema. In order to understand how the transition from western to
kung-fu happened, one must look into both the connections between the two film styles,
and the origins and characteristics of kung-fu films themselves. The term kung-fu is an
old vernacular Cantonese phrase71 which literally translates as “accomplishment with
effort.”72 While defeating four opponents at once or leaping effortlessly on to the roof of
a building are both examples of good kung-fu, so too could the term be applied to
passing a calculus test after studying for it intensely. The phrase kung-fu films “came
into general use only in the 1970’s...and spread as the films themselves were
distributed around the world,” and today kung-fu has come to mean simply hand-tohand combat.73
But what kung-fu represents in the context of Chinese martial arts is greater than
mere fighting skills. In China, martial arts “do not merely serve military or self-defence
purposes. They are, in fact, a form of knowledge related to human biology and Chinese
medicine. At a higher level, they are not a ‘Wei-Gong’ (an ‘outer force’ designed to kill
or injure) but a ‘Nei-Gong’ (an ‘inner force’ designed to overcome the limitations of the
human body and its environment). It is a process of self-discipline.”74 In this context
rests the basis of kung-fu’s ready acceptance by both cowboy audiences and the youth
who developed hip hop culture.
Film scholar Leon Hunt, in Kung Fu Cult Masters, one of the few books focused
exclusively on the kung-fu genre in Asian cinema, describes the history of kung-fu as a
26
journey through a “borderless world.”75 In Hunt’s borderless world, one can find the
roots not only of kung-fu’s connection to cowboy epics and the Frontier Thesis, but also
kung-fu’s appeal to non-Chinese audiences on the other side of the world, in the rough
neighborhoods of New York City. The main historical site of kung-fu in China, and the
most popular background for kung-fu films, is the Shaolin Temple, a Buddhist enclave in
southeastern China.76 Buddhism entered China in the first century A.D., brought along
trade routes from India. In the sixth century, the Indian monk Bodhidharma (Ta Mo in
China) traveled to China and took up residence at the temple at Shaolin. There he
found monks physically weakened by their long hours of meditation and inactivity.
According to legend, Ta Mo introduced the monks to yogic breathing practices, and
developed an array of eighteen exercises to strengthen their bodies and help them
maintain a healthy lifestyle.77 These techniques became the basis for Shaolin kung-fu.
Originating in India, customized for the needs of Chinese devotees, it is obvious that
“Shaolin kung-fu—or, at least, its mythical underpinnings—seems to have been
transcultural from the start.”78 Thus it should not be a surprise to find that kung-fu could
so readily move to another culture fourteen centuries later.
The Shaolin temple, as both a religious institution and the point of origin for kungfu combat techniques, is “central to the mythopoetic origins of Chinese Boxing—fighting
movements derived from nature, lethal abilities mediated by spiritual concerns, patriotic
rebellion and underground movements, southern identity and heritage, the dynamics of
learning and transmission.”79 The location of kung-fu within a Buddhist framework
helped to balance the potentially fatal techniques with the duty, obligation, and restraint
inherent in Buddhist philosophy, keeping those who learned the techniques from
becoming killing machines bent on using their deadly knowledge for personal gain.
During the Ming Dynasty (1368-1643), Shaolin Temple flourished. Its fighting monks
were often called upon by the emperor for military assistance. With the government’s
support, the temple grew in power and influence. The connection between Shaolin and
the Ming rulers proved detrimental, however, when Manchu invaders toppled Emperor
Chung-Chen in 1644. The Manchus established the Qing Dynasty, which would last
until 1911, and ruthlessly persecuted Shaolin and its followers for their aid to the Mings.
27
Accordingly, most kung-fu films take place during this period, particularly the
middle years of the dynasty, which were a time of “instability, marked by both internal
and external turmoils. Internally…plagued by incessant uprisings….[while] externally,
the country fell prey to various imperialist advances from abroad.” The monks of
Shaolin were ‘true patriots,’ never abandoning their devotion to the native Ming Dynasty
or the people of China, and continued to struggle against the Manchus even after
government oppression forced many of the monks to flee the temple. Spreading across
the countryside, they shared their knowledge with the laypeople. Consequently,
although dispersed, kung-fu grew during this period, as “the Chinese people pursued
the martial arts…as a form of self-defense…[and] as a means of strengthening the
faltering nation.”80 Perhaps in this context one can find one of the fundamental appeals
of the kung-fu film when it arrived in the United States in the early 1970’s.
The ‘traditional’ way of life in America was under siege in the late sixties and
early seventies. At home, the counterculture was striving against a conservative society
increasingly irrelevant to the concerns of youth and minority groups.
The Black Power,
Red Power, and Women’s Liberation movements were trying to carve out an equal
place for their constituents. Against them were arrayed the forces of what they, like the
Shaolin monks, considered a “foreign” government that had become too absorbed in its
own power, represented by events such as the Watergate scandal. Abroad, the country
was embroiled in the Vietnam War, a confusing quagmire in which many were
questioning US involvement. In the 1950s, the Beat Generation had broken the
restraints of American society, plunging into experiments in writing, lifestyle, and
philosophy. Their quest for a new cultural frontier led many of them to Eastern thought,
and Buddhism in particular.81
Although they were not politically active as a goal, the
Beats were the “foundation of subversive nonconformity” upon which “the explosion of
youth and counterculture in the sixties were built.”82 In that light, it is easy to see why
the disaffected youth of subsequent decades so readily found philosophical guidance in
the tenets of the kung-fu practitioner.
The heroes of the kung-fu film, by the time they arrived in this country, “shared a
Masonic-like background harking back” to the traditions established by those Shaolin
monks and their disciples. During the Qing Dynasty, they made vows to fight the foreign
28
Manchus and restore the Ming Dynasty to its rightful place as the government of China
(like American minority groups of the sixties and seventies, fighting an oppressive,
“other” government). The tight-knit community of kung-fu masters, with their private
verbal and physical languages of resistance, quickly found a devoted audience in
neglected communities in the United States. A kung-fu fighter, like Zorro, was seen as
“a person who fought for a cause, seeking to restore power and dignity” to an
oppressed people. But the kung-fu hero had gone through a lengthy evolution before
arriving on American shores in his saffron robes and sandals, and traditional western
audiences played quite a role in welcoming him.83
Chinese martial arts films fall under the heading wu xia pian, (“martial arts film,”
or “martial chivalry film”). As director Chang Cheh explains, the terminology itself
highlights the two elements of the genre—wu xia “pictures use the notion of martial arts
(wu) to express the content of chivalry (xia).”84 Wu xia films are divided into two main
categories. The swordplay films, “detailing the chivalrous exploit of ‘Knight-Errants’ and
‘Lady Knights’ in ancient dynasties… often featuring flying swords…and ‘weightless’
flight,” were so popular in China in the 1960’s that the term wu xia is now often used to
refer specifically to them. They were produced predominantly in northern China. Kungfu films originated in the south, and, proudly drawing upon the Shaolin tradition of the
region, featured hand-to-hand combat in comparatively realistic, historical settings, such
as the above-mentioned Manchu period. Yet the preponderance of mainland studios in
the early years of Chinese cinema played a large role in the focus on swordplay films.85
A shift from swordplay to kung-fu began in the 1960’s. Mao launched his
‘Cultural Revolution’ in 1966 and it sent many members of the mainland, Chinese wu xia
film community fleeing to Hong Kong. There they set up shop and continued making wu
xia movies.86 Swords were strangers in the land of kung-fu, though, and by the turn of
the decade the wu xia film was losing ground to the kung-fu film in popularity. Yet
Kung-fu was still a minor genre worldwide. In 1966, Hong Kong cinema had trained its
sights on the Western market, with the goal of gaining a foothold within five years. It
finally achieved that with 1972’s King Boxer (distributed in the United States under the
title Five Fingers of Death).87
29
Interestingly, it was a man from the United States that helped the Hong Kong
kung-fu industry break into the Western market it had targeted. By 1970, “Hong Kong
was buzzing with rumours about Kung Fu and a new star from America, Bruce Lee, who
would show the industry the way to glory.”88 Lee’s role as Kato in the short-lived “Green
Hornet” TV series (1966-67) had won him legions of fans in Hong Kong—it aired there
as “The Kato Show.”89 He returned to Hong Kong, disillusioned with American racism
after being denied the lead role in the television series Kung Fu. Executive producer
Jerry Thorpe originally wanted to cast Lee for the part. “I remember him telling me this,”
director John Badham recalls, “but no one knew who Bruce Lee was, and you know,
they didn’t think an Asian guy could do an Asian guy.” Tom Kuhn, former Warner
Brothers’ Vice President of Television, tells a tale of Lee’s visit to his office while the
series was in casting. Lee burst in the door, kicked it shut, and began swinging
nunchaku, “at me…zoom!..by my nose….the guy was unbelievable. And his presence
was just mesmerizing.” Kuhn was obviously impressed with Lee, and they spent about
an hour talking. “Frankly,” Kuhn admits, “I had trouble understanding him.”90 Other
sources claim that Warner Brothers executives decided Lee either looked “too Chinese”
or “too muscular” to be accepted by US television audiences.91
But Hong Kong had no such reservations. When Lee arrived there, he sparked a
bidding war between several of the major studios; Golden Harvest emerged the winner,
and Lee began work on The Big Boss, which arrived in the US as Fists of Fury in late
1971. Failing to win his services, the other major kung-fu studio, Shaw Brothers, raced
into production on a new film, in an effort to beat Golden Harvest to the box office. The
result of that effort was Chinese Boxer (1971), the first major movie entirely devoted to
the art of kung-fu, “pre-empting, if not actually igniting, the kung-fu fever.”92 Within the
next two years, “approximately three hundred kung-fu films were made for the
international market”—including some that were never released in Hong Kong.93 The
biggest splash was made by King Boxer/Five Fingers of Death, which was the first
kung-fu film to be distributed by a major American studio, and part of a two-pronged
attack by Warner Bros. to gain a foothold for kung-fu on US soil; by May 1973 it had
reached the third spot at US box offices, in the film’s seventh week on the charts.94
30
The second component of Warner Bros.’ effort was their production of the Kung
Fu television series. Kung Fu was a master stroke, a perfect hybridization of the
established hero for American youth, the lone gunman of the Wild West, and the figure
with whom they hoped to replace him, the kung-fu warrior. Caine’s independent
mentality, strong moral compass, and quasi-Buddhist philosophy dovetailed nicely into
the post-1960s western setting, connecting to the characters of early cowboy films. By
importing a character raised in an alien world, Kung Fu was able to bypass the moral
murkiness and awkward details of history with which modern westerns were being
confronted. Caine, half-Chinese and half-American, was an explicit, physical link
between the East and the West: the first non-Chinese admitted to Shaolin Temple, and
the first American to bring Shaolin arts to this country.95
Media reviews at the time noted the connections between Caine and the
cowboys, calling him “a classic American hero”; Esquire magazine put Caine on the
cover, kicking the Long Ranger under the caption “Ah so! A new American hero at
last!”96 Kwai Chang Caine was a man of Western arête—moral but not self-righteous,
brave but not aggressive, proud without hubris—a man who put the xia (chivalry) in wu
xia’s ‘martial chivalry.’ And he embodied the connection between the striving for selfimprovement of arête and the accomplishment with effort of kung-fu; he was a man who
was actively seeking his ‘highest human potential.’ Rademes Pera, who played the
young Caine in the series, recognized one of the reasons for the shows success. “The
character of Kwai Chang Caine,” Pera points out, “is an archetype now in the culture….
It strikes a chord in people, and because of that, it has the power and longevity that it’s
had.” Looking back in 2004, Carradine concurred, attributing its longevity to the fact
that Kung Fu “is an everyman story; this is a morality play. It’s eternal…. It has echoes
of mythology.” Caine synthesized the characteristics revered by two distinct cultures,
and showed American audiences that heroes outside the western tradition had value as
well. But even Caine’s extensive knowledge, symbolically straddling the heroic
traditions of Western and Eastern culture, likely could not have predicted the rush of
Western youth through the temple gates he had exited in China.97
Kung-fu as a genre was aimed at two particular audiences in the United States.
Kung Fu the series “suggested that China had replaced India in the (white, middle-
31
class) counterculture’s romance with the East,” but offered something the India of the
“1960’s experience” could not, “the fantasy of a hippie who could fight back.”98 Richard
Robinson, in his Carradine-idolizing Kung Fu: The Peaceful Way, gushed about the
superiority of the television series over the films that followed (about which “the most
impressive thing” is that “people want to see them”) because the show was about
“peace, love, the natural way, ecology, a raising of consciousness, higher sense of
spiritual values, the search for a nonviolent answer to violent confrontations.” But
Robinson’s final descriptive—that the series was about “people who can take care of
themselves if and when they get pushed to the wall”—belies his contention that Kung
Fu was all roses and rainbows.99 In that statement, he explains one of the main
reasons that the films he so despises caught on.
The kung-fu films, coupled as double-headers with blaxploitation films in
“downtown theaters,” were aimed at a second group, minority audiences—particularly
African-American men—by whom nonviolence as a political philosophy had been run
out of town at sundown. Caine, although he fought when necessary, was a man who
suffered far more than he resisted, and he represented an earlier era to them. The
kung-fu hero of Hong Kong, who did not actively seek violence but suffered no fools,
was one with whom they could more closely identify. He refused to submit when he
held the moral high ground. The films “rejected the quietist message of the television
show and benefited from the rising thresholds of screen violence created by Bonnie and
Clyde (1967), The Wild Bunch (1969), and the spaghetti westerns.”100 Bruce Lee’s films
are a perfect example; his characters did not have the pacific edge of Carradine’s
Caine, and “many a black or Hispanic youth was inspired by Lee’s fearless
confrontations with white power.”101 While Lee rarely—if ever—confronted overt “white
power,” he was fighting ‘the man,’ the power structure, the government, the unfeeling,
uncaring, ‘foreign’ bureaucracy against which minorities in the seventies were
struggling.
It is a small leap to see how, in the flood of kung-fu films of the early seventies,
audiences found the same appeal in the hundreds of kung-fu heroes who fought the
Manchus. After the early entry of Chinese Boxer and the smash success of King
Boxer/Five Fingers of Death, kung-fu offerings expanded greatly—between King
32
Boxer’s release in the spring of 1973 and by the end of the year, 38 new films had been
purchased for US distribution. Kung-fu films became a “’downtown’ genre, playing in
neighborhoods abandoned by white flight. Audiences of Asian African, and Hispanic
heritage kept the genre alive into the early 1980’s before video wiped out the local
movie house.”102 But video did not wipe out the kung-fu hero.
Kung-fu films lived on, adopted and nurtured by their multicultural audiences, and
formed an important element in the shaping of hip hop’s vision of heroism. And with
good reason: “At its worst, the martial arts movie is laughable, totally deserving of
derision. But at its best, it can supply an audience exhilaration that cannot be found in
any other cinema….These are great action movies. These are great superhero movies.
They deliver where other unimaginative, overblown, and campy superhero movies
fail.”103 The kung-fu hero was a superhero without superpowers, just skills developed
and refined through training, devotion, study, and effort.
The kung-fu heroes were the results of a dogged determination to prevail,
encouraging examples to youth forced to rely on their personal abilities alone, and the
obvious successor to the cowboy hero who had lived under the same conditions. The
world of kung-fu was “a world that you [did not] know,” Kung Fu director John Badham
explained, “but you want[ed] to know more about.”104
Most fans of kung-fu movies
were “converted by the unique experience, the ‘WHOA, where did this come from?’ feel
of that first film, which was not so much an encounter with a foreign culture as the
twisting of something vaguely familiar into a new universe.”105 They were converted by
the appearance on the silver screen of the ‘kung-fu cowboy.’
The Cowboy Connection
English-speaking audiences watching the 2000 hit Crouching Tiger, Hidden
Dragon may have been confused several times during the film, when they encountered,
lodged firmly among the English subtitles, the untranslated phrase Jiang Hu. Was Jiang
Hu a character they had missed? Had the crew in charge of subtitles simply missed
those words? No, it was something more than that; it is a concept for which there is no
direct translation. Its literal meaning is “rivers and lakes,” as in the “wild, unsettled
33
region on the fringes of civilization; metaphorically, however, it has a much more
complex connotation.” It is a central theme in Chinese martial arts. Jiang Hu is a world
into which the powers of centralized government have little reach; its residents, made
up in large part of society’s renegades, exiles, and outcasts, would “refuse to submit to
common law” even if required. What keeps the denizens of jiang hu from degenerating
“into mere anarchy is an unwritten code of ethics—a chivalry of the outlaw brotherhood.
It is ultimately this code that is being invoked” when the Chinese refer to jiang hu.106
Perhaps, then, the best translation is already very familiar to US viewers: the
frontier. Versed in nearly a century of Wild West films and stories, American audiences
could readily see similarities between their cowboy heroes and Hong Kong heroes who
are “honest and courageous, but quick to anger, and willing to avenge a wrong
regardless of the personal cost. If they do make a pledge, no matter how trivial, they
honor it with their lives… [Jiang hu] is a recipe for a kind of honor among
renegades.”107 Taken a step further, jiang hu, like the frontier, refers to a broader, more
layered concept, ‘the wilds.’ Like the American frontier, or the ‘rivers and lakes’ of
China, the impoverished neighborhoods of New York were a wilderness where formal
law did not always take priority, and where the inhabitants formed their own codes of
behavior in order to survive.
The study of Chinese martial arts films, and kung-fu films in particular, is a very
young field. A serious effort to write about Chinese cinema began only in the mid1970’s, and “even then, much of it was written on an amateur basis.”108 Kung-fu film
has suffered the additional disadvantage of being dismissed as a pulp genre, as David
Bordwell points out: “Respectable Western critics have long been at a loss to explain
why audiences and filmmakers are fascinated by Hong Kong film. From the start, these
movies offended guardians of taste.”109 Although his use of the term “respectable” is
problematic, and hopefully ironic—how respectable can they be if they dismiss the
genre without investigating why it is popular—it is clear that kung-fu studies is still a
developing field. Even those few books that have been written about kung-fu films tend
to study the technical aspects of film-making, or gender roles, or questions of
nationalism. What they have not looked at is how audiences received them, how they
influenced culture (particularly in the US), why they were “fascinating.”
34
Interestingly, many of these writers, even from the earliest works, have touched
on the cowboy connection that helped kung-fu films resonate with US audiences. As
early as 1973, an article in Cinema/TV Today discussed how the kung-fu film had
characteristics “both exotic and familiar”; they were films with “many of the
characteristics of the Cowboys and Indians stories” and offered “plenty of thrills and
excitement.”110 Presumably the comparison was being made then to continue drawing
new viewers to the genre—it was only two months after Five Fingers of Death had
climbed the box office charts—but others have pointed out the same similarities.
In A Study of the Hong Kong Martial Arts Film, a collection of essays published in
conjunction with the Fourth Hong Kong International Film Festival in 1980, several
authors came tantalizingly close to tackling the cowboy/kung-fu partnership. Sek Kei,
writing on the early kung-fu films of the sixties, realized that they were similar to
westerns in intent and scope. The Golden Eagle was “mounted on the scale of a large
Hollywood film” and featured “wrestling, archery, horsemanship, fist fights, sword fights,
knife throwing duels, and comic combat scenes,” all elements that would have been
familiar to cowboy audiences. Treasure Island—set in the early days of the Republic of
China after the fall of the Qing in 1911, a frontier period of change—was a “story of five
heroes who wipe out a gang of bandits,” and it “centered on a battle of wits, with
displays of strength and gun-fights.”111 But visual similarities with westerns were not the
only ones to be found; there was a philosophical connection between the two genres as
well.
Yu Mo-Wan’s “The Prodigious Cinema of Huang Fei-Hong,”112 discusses the
characteristics of the Huang Fei-Hong films, a series of proto-kung-fu movies that were
largely responsible for establishing the template used by kung-fu films. He concludes
that the success of the films in large part hinged on the success of the central themes,
traditional Confucian virtues: “Propriety (the quality of being humble and courteous),
Righteousness (willingness to stand up for what is right), Charitable Love (veneration for
the old and compassion for the poor), and Peace (resolving problems without the use of
violence).”113 These echo cowboy qualities, although the views of violence require
investigation; perhaps the word “unnecessary” should be added to Yu’s
characterization. Essentially, though, both archetypes frown on senseless violence, but
35
do not shy away whatsoever when, literally, their hands are forced by determined
villains. Then again, like westerns, the Huang Fei-Hong films (and the kung-fu films that
followed) were about action, and scenes of pacific conflict-resolution held little interest
for audiences anywhere.
Yu concludes that the ideal martial artist is “a protector of the weak and the
oppressed, and an uncompromising champion of truth and justice….the public good
takes precedence over his personal grievances and, when confronted with evil-doers,
he first tries persuasion, and has recourse to violence only as a last resort.”114 Other
similarities to the cowboy hero are expanded upon in Tony Rayns’ article on wu xiaturned-kung-fu star Wang Yu. Wang tended to portray characters who belonged to “an
era of stoic, individual heroism…. His screen persona is resolutely solitary.”115 Although
his films (including Chinese Boxer and Return of the Chinese Boxer, One-Armed
Swordsman, and Blood of the Dragon) were not well-received by critics of Asian
cinema, his ascetic characters—strong, determined, and almost supernaturally capable
of triumphing over astounding odds—resonated with a culture with half a century worth
of experience in cheering on the lone gunman.
At least one author in the collection drew explicitly on westerns to help elucidate
his points about kung-fu films.116 Ng Ho, in the conclusion to “When Legends Die,”
made an insightful, if short-sighted, observation on the relationship between the two
genres:
[Kung-fu films] are like American westerns in that both take historical
or quasi-historical figures and subject them to the process of myth-making.
It is less attractive a project to establish the factual reality of these figures
than it is to explore the renewal and revitalization of their images as
legends. Like westerns, kung-fu films will inevitably decline. Myths and
legends could survive in the 1950s and 1960s, but they have no place in
the ultramodern 1980s.117
Obviously, he slightly exaggerated the demise of myths and legends in the 1980s.
Since his article, wizards, witches, medieval knights, superheroes, cowboys and kung-fu
have continued to draw viewers to movie theaters; kung-fu films themselves helped to
spawn a whole new generation of ‘ultramodern’ hip hop legends.
What is true is his statement about the connections between western and kungfu myth-making, the way that they both formed heroic archetypes in their respective
36
cultures. Unfortunately, a quarter of a century later, no one has delved any further into
the relationship between those archetypes. Recently, some authors have noted the
similarities in passing— Stephen Teo is aware that “Skills were considered the ultimate
test of superiority just as a skill with guns and a fast draw were the ultimate test for
cowboys,” while David Bordwell sees “the history and legends surrounding China’s
martial arts… [as] a treasure house of stories, akin to…tales of the U.S. frontier,” and
Leon Hunt recognizes that “Chinese kung-fu films…marked out a fictional world as
distinctive as,” and even “invit[es] comparison with,” the western—but none of them take
the next step and investigate the impact of those relationships.118
Even plain statements from famed members of the Hong Kong film community
have not sparked further studies. Director Chang Cheh, a giant in the field with more
than a hundred films to his credit, recognized as having “created the exemplary martial
hero…a romantic who did not shirk from violence in the defense of his principles,”119
cited western director Sam Peckinpah (“Gunsmoke”) as a major influence on his
filmmaking style.120 Mak Kar, who studied film at New York Uinversity in the 1960s and
1970s, brought back and built upon the influences he found in the United States,
especially the spaghetti westerns of Sergio Leone.121 Kar was responsible for
popularizing the kung-fu comedy subgenre in the late seventies with films such as Dirty
Tiger, Crazy Frog (1978) and Crazy Crooks (1980). But even Chang’s explicit nod to
the influence of westerns, repeating the connection made in the title of Kar’s first big hit,
1976’s The Good, The Bad, and The Loser, has not been enough to send one man,
much less a posse, in search of the kung-fu cowboy,.
Kung-fu films made such a ready transition to US audiences because of these
similarities. By the time they began arriving in the early seventies, westerns had
become victims of their own self-conscious exploration of the realities of America’s past.
What began as a genre of straightforward, humanistic plots revolving around mythic
dualities of good and evil had evolved into a psychologically complex exercise in
historical catharsis; “they became self-consciously sentimental, as a way of playing up
the humanist side of the genre. Chinese kung-fu films remain locked in violence and
farce’ how many of them could be said to be graced with touches of humanism?”122 I
would argue that most kung-fu films could. They are almost all centered on the
37
obligation to do what is “right,” and many focus on self-sacrifice and efforts for the
greater good, for those unable to better their own situation. Unlike westerns, however,
kung-fu films did not lose the action and energy for which they were known in order to to
accomplish this; indeed, these ‘touches’ of humanism were intrinsic before the height of
their popularity. Hong Kong offered a return to the good ol’ days, when the good guys
were the good guys, the bad guys were the bad guys, and everyone knew who the
heroes were.
Even better, Hong Kong’s offerings appealed in a special way to the audiences at
which they were aimed. The early Chinese martial arts film, from the 1920s through
1940s, tended to be a vehicle for fantastic wu xia fight scenes and lacked a larger
context; one can hear the echoes of Mao in 1960s criticisms of the genre, which
focused on “individual grievances in order to obscure the contradictions between the
classes; it propagates a feudal and superstitious belief in retribution in order to dull the
people’s determination to resist; and it promotes the wishful pursuit of the Tao away in
the mountains or in monasteries in order to deflect the people from the path of struggle
in reality.”123 This had changed by the late 1960s, as the Shaolin traditions of kung-fu
gave ample opportunity to explore class struggle. Bruce Lee’s films, the work of the
Shaw Bros. studio, and the productions from recently-founded Golden Harvest
studios124, set poor heroes (usually aided or trained by monks, or monks themselves),
against antagonistic, acquisitive businessmen (Lee’s preferred opponent125) or
murderous foreign invaders, be they Manchus (Shaw Bros.) or Japanese (Golden
Harvest). It was the ‘Cult of the Indian’ revised; audiences were able to cheer for the
natives fighting the evil invaders/settlers without the guilt of the western version.
Once again, there was a hero who had to “fight for his pride (and sometimes his
principles) without radically questioning himself”—indeed, in these plots, there was often
little to question.126 The costumes had changed and the faces looked different, but in
the breast of the Shaolin disciple beat the heart of the cowboy archetype. The kung-fu
hero faced “folkloric tests of ability, trials of strength and will, and challenges from
strangers,” and to top it off, he lacked a trusty six-shooter.127 The kung-fu hero settled
his fights in a way even the toughest cowpoke would have to respect—with his fists and
his feet.
38
THE KUNG-FU HERO
“…I want to create a new chamber. Shaolin skills are confined here in the monastery,
and in my view that’s a great pity. I think Shaolin techniques should be available to all.
So then, that’s my idea for a new chamber—to teach the martial arts to the people.
Anybody. Shaolin skills belong to posterity. What I’m proposing is that you allow me to
go out, and share the Shaolin knowledge.”
-San Te, Enter the 36th Chamber
Classic Kung-Fu
Kung-fu films divide into two main categories. The earlier films are ‘classic’ kungfu, serious efforts to explore the heritage of Shaolin, the martial traditions of China, and
conflicts between martial schools and government forces. These films had the run of
Hong Kong until the mid-seventies, when directors like Mak Kar began to inject
elements of Cantonese slapstick into their oeuvre, and formed the kung-fu comedy,
which soon held a prominent place of its own in theaters around the world. They were
often still located at Shaolin, but some abandoned the historical past in favor of the
comedic possibilities, and opportunity for social commentary, of modern urban Chinese
life. Both the classic and the comic films bequeathed their own legacy to early hip hop.
The classic kung-fu film had two aspects that proved to be vital elements of hip
hop culture. The first, a message about an underprivileged, oppressed group finding
within itself the means to resist and gain a sense of pride, gave youth in New York City
in the 1970s encouragement to develop their own definitions of worth. Through
discipline, creativity, and personal effort, they were able to establish a new, vibrant
culture.
The second, more immediately visible, were the specific kinetic
demonstrations of kung-fu films, which they absorbed, adapted, and reformulated to fit
39
their needs. Kung-fu was one of the foundations of not only hip hop philosophy, but the
aesthetics of breaking.
The reasons why kung-fu films were well received by minority audiences are
clear. But how did the development of those films influence hip hop? Martial arts films,
before the rise of kung-fu specifically, were not as overtly political as kung-fu would later
be. The early films featured “effete, romantic heroes,” dealing with personal situations
but not larger social issues, a fact that some scholars have connected to “the
subordinate status of a colonized and dominated culture.” The new martial star, the
kung-fu hero, was born in the mid-1960s. China had grown into a new superpower and
Hong Kong was well on its way to being an “Asian Tiger”; the kung-fu hero was a
“cultural registration of an increasing sense of self-confidence expressed in the same
mythical and historical narrative forms.”128 The liberated feeling in Hong Kong was
reflected by its film studios, which shifted to a new choreography of explosive action.
Along with the shift in action came a shift in setting. Gone was the mythic,
ancient-world, swordplay of the wu xia film. In its place was the gritty, unarmed combat
of China’s historical past, making the genre more relevant to its audience in both time
and spirit. Directors realized that the special effects on which wu xia had been so
heavily based were “inadequate to the occasion.” Instead, they attempted to reach a
middle-ground that Sek Kei refers to as “credible exaggeration.”
They looked outside
of traditional Chinese cinema, and incorporated “Western and Japanese methods of
handling action scenes from the points of view of camera movement, effects, stunts,
and even fighting methods.” Fantasy-combat montages and a focus on special effects
gave way to display of fighting styles with “increasingly rigorous plausibility. Conceptual
niceties gave way to practical function” and realistic movements which would later be
imitated by b-boys. The idea of “credible exaggeration”—believable techniques
performed at an unbelievable level—inspired b-boys to probe the boundaries between
possible and seemingly-impossible.129
The kung-fu techniques of the early seventies were Wei Gong, the external styles
geared towards physical combat and familiar to the “average Chinese viewer.”130
Importantly for our early b-boys, “there was less fantasy and more of an achievable skill
gained through relentless training…Kung-fu thus emphasized the body and training
40
rather than fantasy or the supernatural.”131 The techniques were realistic, and there
was no reason to believe, as there had been in the earlier films, that any magical
abilities or mystical skills were needed to perform the feats of the kung-fu hero.
In particular, Bruce Lee’s insistence on not using cinematic magic or camera
tricks was well-publicized, and audiences were “aware that his kung-fu skills are not the
result of supernatural strength or special effects…[his] skill is achievable, a result of
fitness and rigorous training.”132 By proxy, viewers applied those conclusions to many
other kung-fu stars, whose self-reliance inspired a desire to emulate them in spectators.
For instance, in the film Warriors Two, “the pseudo-scientific explication of Yongchun
Boxing is so plausible that audiences doubtless went home determined to learn it for
themselves, but what’s seen in the film bears little relation to the actual style.”133 In the
eyes of the early b-boys, however, realism was “less important than a bold
expressiveness in every dimension.”134 The point is that the films were so specific and
inspiring that they led to the creation of original movement.
The move towards more realistic action made such an impact on audiences that
directors and kung-fu choreographers became increasingly concerned with authenticity.
By 1974, a run of movies focusing on “proper” Shaolin kung-fu techniques was kicked
off by Shaolin Boxers and The Skyhawk. Although these two films were largely
forgettable, three movies released later that year were much more successful, and
began a string of Shaolin films that left an indelible mark on breaking. Heroes Two,
Men From the Monastery, and Shaolin Martial Arts introduced the kung-fu techniques of
southern China to the world in “concrete, vivid detail.”135
The films took different routes to reach their goal of educating the audience about
Shaolin and its martial traditions.136 Heroes Two was preceded in theaters by a short
documentary explaining the history and characteristics of three styles. The most
successful of the group, Shaolin Martial Arts, spent less time than the other two on the
legends surrounding the Shaolin Temple, and instead concentrated its efforts on the
“performance, explanation, and practice of specific martial techniques.”137 Sek Kei
notes that the Shaolin techniques of these films formed the basis for the “humorous
acrobatic styles” that would appear later in kung-fu comedies; at the same time, they
were serving as models and training films for b-boys in New York City. As Rock Steady
41
Crew breaker Ken Swift recalls, “Every kung-fu movie was like styles, people got they
ass whipped, and they went back and got revenge, and it was cool, and that was like
something maybe we saw this as kids in the hood, as something we dealt with every
day in our lives, you know what I’m saying, dealing with the way we had to live, in
school and at home.”138 Each in its own way, the kung-fu films helped to build the
foundation for a new way of life for their youth audiences.
Shaolin Temple (1976) dealt with the admission of lay students to Shaolin, a
move, made necessary by increasing Manchu hostility, to ensure the survival of Shaolin
kung-fu techniques. Unlike Shaolin Martial Arts, with its focus on the styles themselves,
Shaolin Temple addresses “the functioning of the temple itself: its training techniques,
its code of ethics, the tension between Buddhist doctrine and patriotic testosterone, the
traitors within who conspire with the Qing government.”139 A code of ethics, group
loyalty, the reconciliation of ideals and impulsive desires—all important messages to
kids dealing with the uncertainties of life in the ‘hood. Films like Shaolin Temple were
expounding the theories and origins of kung-fu; the same year, Secret Rivals/Silver Fox
Rivals140 raised the standard for fight choreography. No longer were there as many
vague, flailing arm movements as in the early kung-fu films. In their place were “flashy
high kicks combined with acrobatics, stylish crisp hand moves, and jumping
combination kicks.”141 The new choreography had an immediate impact on early bboys. “Realistically, [we] would leave the theater and just want to kick the shit out of
people,” Ken Swift remembers. “I mean, we would walk uptown and sometimes just
kick somebody…You know, we would do a demo on somebody, and start doing exactly
what we saw in the movie, not knowing what we were doing, but just imitating it to the
max.”142 The mid-seventies are recognized as the time that hip hop culture took
cohesive shape, and the first b-boys began to develop a distinctive hip hop style. As
the choreography and philosophy of the films became more refined, so too did the
choreography and philosophy of b-boying.
The film to explore most fully the educational possibilities, and responsibilities, of
Shaolin temple was the classic 36th Chamber of Shaolin (1978),143 directed by Lau KarLeung. Set firmly in the middle of the Qing Dynasty, it “tackles the learning process not
only of a style or a philosophy, but of a martial arts totality.”144 36th Chamber traces the
42
progress of a youth (Lau Kar-Fei, as San Te145) who, following the murder of his parents
by corrupt government officials, evades pursuit and flees to the Shaolin temple. Once
there, he begins to study martial arts to avenge their deaths. In painstaking detail, the
film documents his progress through the 35 chambers at Shaolin, in each of which he
learns a new martial arts technique, exercise, or philosophy before progressing to the
next, harder chamber.
Upon completion of the 35th level, San Te is told that he may take over the
instruction of pupils in any one of the lessons; the film’s title is taken from San Te’s
request to be allowed to create a new chamber, outside the temple. From this chamber,
he proposes to teach Shaolin martial techniques to the world, so that the people can
defend themselves. The chief abbot and his assistants are shocked at the request, and
when San Te protests, the abbot—with a surreptitious nod and a sly wink—banishes
San Te from the temple. When San Te realizes that he has been cast out into the world
at large as “punishment” by a secretly-sympathetic abbot, he can barely contain his
glee. Banned from the temple, San Te transforms Guangdong into a “factory for the
production of resistance.”146 The last section of the film focuses on San Te’s efforts to
gather a group of followers, whom he instructs in Shaolin techniques and leads in
struggle against the foreign Manchu forces of the Qing Dynasty. Director Lau KarLeung thus explicitly portrays the value of Shaolin kung-fu as a means of dealing with
the challenges of daily life in an unsympathetic social system, a fact not missed by
audiences.
Another element of 36th Chamber is the form taken by the interaction between
San Te and the senior monks in the monastery. As he progresses through the
chambers, he transforms from a willful, oblivious boy to an aware, dutiful man. In order
to complete his final test, however, he has to defeat the master of the combat classes.
Despite repeated efforts with the weapons he learned from his teachers—spear, pole,
sword, long-handled axe—he fails. Undaunted, he invents a new weapon, with which
he is able to readily defeat the combat master. In so doing, San Te is able to transcend
the traditional teacher/student relationship of the Shaolin films. His ability to teach
himself, “to effectively blur the Master/Pupil division, to remain suspended ‘between
established cultural systems’”147 sent a message to audiences. They saw a youth in
43
need working the system for what he could get from it, using its information to serve his
own ends, and developing his own methods, which were more effective techniques of
coping in society than the traditional ones. In effect, he transformed himself into the
teacher, the viewer into his student, and the streets of New York and other cities into his
temple—his goal of establishing a 36th chamber to take kung-fu skills to the world
succeeded in a much grander way than the small group he gathered around himself
after leaving the monastery in the film.
Hip hop artist RZA, one of the founders of rap supergroup Wu-Tang Clan, is one
of the few members of the hip hop culture to have written on the influence of the kung-fu
hero on hip hop’s development in the 1970s. In The Wu-Tang Manual, a history of the
development of the group and their ideas, he includes a chapter on the influence of
martial arts. The 36th Chamber figures prominently, and he credits it with being the film
that really took the kung-fu hero from an admired figure to an emulated role-model.
RZA was “just amazed” by the film—he found its moves and message “sublime.” The
similarities between the oppression of the characters in the film and the people in his
neighborhood struck home, and he “related to that on a lot of levels.” He, like others,
transformed that relationship into action; he remembers that it was “the second part of
the movie…the training he went through to become a master, to build himself up…that
took me by storm. I actually began doing push-ups and punching walls, going to
Chinatown and getting books, the whole trip. The 36th Chamber was the one that
opened my mind. The idea of self-discipline, of re-creating yourself. I was around
fourteen years old. And it changed me, for real.” But The 36th Chamber was not the
only film that would directly influence hip hop’s development.148
Other films highlighted, and helped build, the connections between the kung-fu
heroes and their audience-disciples on a more personal level. Movies like Boxer from
Shantung (1971) and Disciples of Shaolin (1975), another entry in the Shaolin series,
focused on “working-class” youths whose martial skills enabled them to advance in
society.149 In these films, the heroes were orphaned as children, then raised and
trained in kung-fu at Shaolin monasteries. After leaving, they wind up in cities, where
their training—diligence, self-reliance, innovation—helps them to survive and find a
place of some sort in “modern” society.150 Early b-boys, feeling abandoned and
44
“orphaned” by a remote, unresponsive government, saw the parallels they had with their
kung-fu heroes, and incorporated their physical and mental methods of coping, albeit in
new forms, into their own lives. When added to some of the elements gleaned from
kung-fu comedies, the messages, information, and demonstrations of classic kung-fu
had a dramatic impact on early hip hop.
Kung-fu Comedy
I was quite young…I felt so strongly the need to express my sentiments about social
conditions.
-Jet Li151
The rise of the kung-fu comedy sub-genre provided a bulwark of sorts for kung-fu
films, allowing to a wider variety of viewers than those solely interested in authentic
techniques, and thereby prolonged the commercial viability of kung-fu films. It was a
“transitional” form that gave martial arts instructors the leeway to experiment more with
movement and attitude.152 The corpus of motion and message thus expanded, from
authentic styles, combative techniques, and militant resistance, to include innovative
movement, playful attitudes, and creative subversion. B-boys combined the moral
obligations of the traditional films, in the form of devotion to a crew/extended family, with
the rebellious, self-reliant character of the comedies, to create a new ideal, and, like the
cowboys of old, resisted the codified behaviors expected of them. Instead, like their
kung-fu heroes, they shaped their own society, a self-supporting community that
circumvented the traditional social ladder, and developed their own parameters of selfworth.
The roots of the kung-fu comedy were laid well before the first movies of that
subgenre were produced in the late 1970s. After Mao’s Cultural Revolution, China
directed its efforts to improving the reputation of its native folk arts. Among the first
cultural ambassadors were Chinese opera and acrobatic troupes, and “the agility and
quirky humour of the performances is not so far removed from” the styles and forms
displayed in early kung-fu comedies such as Mak Kar’s Dirty Tiger, Crazy Frog, and
45
Jackie Chan’s breakout performance in Drunken Master (both 1978).153 The Chinese
wanted to show the value of their personal creations, just as b-boys and early hip hop
adherents were intent on showing the value of the culture developing in the inner city
neighborhoods of New York. As Action, a b-boy and member of the New York City
Breakers explains it, “A lot of people think if you’re from New York and you’re from the
Bronx, that you’re no good. But we’re from the Bronx, and we’re out here to show
everybody that we’re good…. Coming from the ghetto, where everyone thinks it’s so
negative, and we’re doing something positive, know what I’m saying, how can that not
become big? Or how can that not become respected in society?”154 Like their b-boy
descendants, kung-fu heroes and directors used a local art form in part in an attempt to
earn respect for their culture.
They did become respected, first by the creators of hip hop, and eventually by
the world. Kar’s work in particular had a great influence on the tone of the films that
followed; even ‘classic’ kung-fu movies often incorporated a drunk secretly skilled in a
novel personal technique, or a whiny character who preferred fleeing to fighting despite
the fact that he was part of the kung-fu brotherhood. Kar made “fight scenes less the
raison d’etre of the genre” by introducing elements such as the exploits of con-men and
slapstick, comic violence. He made a place in his films for those individuals who cut a
less-than-traditionally-heroic figure, or for whom it was easier to blend a little farther into
society’s background than to be a leader. He did not focus on “chivalrous or heroic
figures, nor yet on belligerent stuntmen out to make a kill; but on ‘little men’ who live on
their wits in order to survive in a hostile world.”155 To kids trapped in the dangerous
streets of inner city New York, living by one’s wits had obvious relevance.
Kung-fu comedies helped to round out the offerings of the kung-fu genre, and
their “cynical, quick-witted heroes suggest an urban sensibility.” Even those comedies
visually set in period were modern in both look and outlook, and not only in their diverse
reference points, which included television and advertising catchphrases. Kung-fu
comedians such as Samo Hung felt that, “Sometimes changes should be made and
[their] own thoughts added, so as to make the atmosphere satisfy the audience,” and
reflect “a modern competitive society in which only the fittest survive and the younger
are generally fitter.”156 Although slightly goofy, the comic hero made as strong a
46
connection with hip hop’s founders as the kung-fu cowboy had, by virtue of the kung-fu
comic’s location in city, and often modern, settings. They, like the Shaolin heroes, were
teachers in their own right, demonstrating the “virtues of ‘adaptability’ and ‘using the
brain’ in capitalist societies.”157 Aside from their lessons on surviving at the bottom of
the metropolitan food chain, the kung-fu comedies’ move to contemporary time and
spaces served another purpose. Their modern settings and attitudes helped to make
clear the possibilities for kung-fu in city life, possibilities which b-boys latched onto in
particular.
Films such as 1976’s Private Eyes, featuring fights in a supermarket and a
restaurant kitchen, as well as later films by Jackie Chan, Samo Hung, and others, drove
home the possibilities for kung-fu (and kung-fu-inspired movement) in modern times and
urban spaces.158 Critic Chan Ting-Hing noted in 1980 that “an interesting point about
Hung’s films is that they are becoming more and more contemporary in atmosphere,
and the psychology revealed by the characters together with the situations they
encounter link these films more and more with people in present day Hong Kong.”159
But the films also had plenty of opportunity to resonate with people in New York City,
home of the largest Chinatown in the United States; according to director and producer
Ng See-Yuen, in terms of overseas distribution and target audiences, kung-fu studios
“concentrated on the Chinese population in the United States and Canada.”160 A kungfu fight scene set on a street corner on a Hong Kong street corner in 1978 must have
looked, except for some of the faces, almost identical to a contemporaneous b-boy
battle in the Bronx.
Just as the philosophies of the “classic” films echoed the moral and familial
obligations, and determination, of the cowboy hero, the kung-fu comedies had their own
messages. They were not as centered on the stoic lessons of the earlier films; it is
difficult to be a wily, comic trickster if one’s life is preordained by duty and destiny. The
kung-fu comedies helped to build the good-natured irreverence and amiability of the bboy culture. The comic hero was “pragmatic and adaptable, creative and
unpredictable,” a hero whom “much of Hong Kong’s younger generation could relate to
far more easily.”161 In their modern settings, the kung-fu comedy was able, however, to
reflect the sense of independence and self-sufficiency embodied in the cowboy hero.
47
Their “emphasis on individual achievement and an outdoing of one’s own master
undoubtedly paralleled the ethos of capitalism,” but kung-fu comedies had other
significance for our post-cowboy audiences.162 Individual achievement, capitalist or not,
found a ready home in theaters that had been hosting cowboy films extolling the virtues
of independence for fifty years. And to kids who grew up playing the dozens, a primarily
African-American verbal contest of taunts and boasts, outdoing one another was a
familiar pastime.163 That value is firmly embraced in b-boy culture, a world of oneupmanship, where “busting” new moves, originality, and creativity are lauded, and
“biting” (copying someone else, as opposed to trying to outdo them) is a serious taboo.
Like b-boys, the creators of kung-fu comedies could not rest on their laurels and
keep their position at the top. With the same imagination, creativity, and effort that they
demanded of their characters, they tweaked, pushed, and prodded, “especially the
training and fight scenes which, in order to keep contemporary audiences interested,
[had to] continuously reveal new twists.”164 Constantly upping the ante, the kung-fu
hero served as an extended member of the b-boy family, presenting new moves, new
attitudes, and new looks.
Eventually the trend of increasing complexity reached a peak, in 1983. Three
important films were released that year. Jackie Chan’s Project A redefined the kung-fu
comedy, with an all-star cast (including Samo Hung and Yuen Biao) and a huge budget.
It was the first of Chan’s films to feature the spectacular stuntwork for which he would
become known, performed by Chan’s own Sing Kar Ban stunt team, in “breathtaking
showcases for Chan’s inventiveness, humor, and willingness to risk life and limb for the
sake of entertainment.”165 Zu: Warriors from the Magic Mountain, directed by Tsui Hark,
added new elements, determined to prove that Hong Kong could match Hollywood’s
special effects. Hark sent his hero through dimensional portals to battle intergalactic
beasts in what many called the “Chinese Star Wars.”166 Clearly the slapstick and witty
wordplay on which Mak Kar had built his films was no longer sufficient to carry a kung-fu
comedy.
Directors outside the comedy community were forced to adapt as well; “‘pure’
kung-fu had largely gone out of fashion and Hong Kong action was embracing an
increasingly montage-based aesthetic,” much like the one it had abandoned in the late
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sixties when the turn to kung-fu began. The third important film of 1983 was Eight
Diagram Pole Fighter, reuniting the director-star team of brothers, Lau Kar-Leung and
Lau Kar-Fei, from 36th Chamber. Lau Kar-Leung, without abandoning his devotion to
authentic representation, incorporated increasingly spectacular techniques and
choreographic elements to stay current. Although the brothers Lau succeeded in
creating another kung-fu classic, it was the last hurrah for “kung-fu in its most classical
manifestation: the art being shown in its purely physical mode while the genre is still
largely in an unadulterated form.”167 By the mid-eighties, even those kung-fu heroes
most devoted to authenticity were bowing to the expectations raised by the modernized
settings and styles of the new generation of directors and new trends.
Simultaneously, a shift was happening in b-boying. Breakers made appearances
in mainstream films like Flashdance (1983), and were the focus of documentaries such
as Style Wars (1983) and Wild Style (1982). They showed up more frequently in print
media, as well. B-boys had been introduced to the world in 1981, when Village Voice
ran the first article to be published, “To the Beat, Y’all,” establishing Sally Banes as an
early scholarly voice on the culture. By the summer of 1984, they were the cover story
in Newsweek; the article marveled at breaking’s spread from the poor black and Latino
neighborhoods of the Bronx to white, middle class enclaves across the country. Bboying had blown into a pop-culture phenomenon. It was in commercials for everything
from Levi’s to Panasonic, and was featured in the closing ceremonies of the 1984
Olympics in Los Angeles. As b-boying gained worldwide attention, the dancing
changed. There was a decreased emphasis on the intricate arm movements and
footwork that were the legacy of the ‘educational’ kung-fu films of the seventies, and a
move towards more high-flying stunts, twists, and flips. B-boys began to lose the
intermediary steps and simply focused on visually impressive moves without mastering
the entire breaking repertoire.168
The consensus on this transition among those who study hip hop seems to be
that it reflected the greater appeal that the stunts had for the cameras which had
recently become trained so intently on the b-boys.169 Cameras in general, and news
cameras in particular, tend to focus on the dramatic. Footwork did not translate as
readily onto film; the viewer had to be familiar with the technicalities of other dance
49
forms in order to fully grasp the creativity displayed by the breakers. Even the most
casual observer of dance, however, could plainly realize that the headspins, windmills,
and other acrobatic b-boy innovations were like nothing they had ever seen before.
“Breaking for the camera” is a respectable argument, but it fails to consider the reasons
for growth within the kung-fu cowboy continuum.
The b-boys changed in part because their kung-fu cowboy heroes were
changing. With kung-fu films turning from long, single-shot fight scenes to rapid
transitions and multiple angles, a cut-and-paste style, there was no longer an archival
quality to the combat footage.170 Things happened faster, quicker; kung-fu heroes no
longer built up to one special strike, but pulled out all the stops as soon as the fight
began. Increased variety in stunt work in the films led to increased experimentation in
the streets. For a dozen years, kids had been watching movies intent on showing them
techniques founded on the ideas of “rigorous plausibility” and “credible exaggeration.”
Their styles had grown along with the kung-fu hero, and when his style advanced, they
did their best to follow. The change in film choreography and effects, and influence of
those changes upon the audience, was manifested in the shift in b-boying, from
concentrating on grounded, floor-based styles, to high-flying, vertical movement. In any
event, by the mid-eighties breaking had matured into an established form. Like other
mature dances—swing being the easiest comparison—once performers have mastered
the vocabulary of floor moves, and expanded them to cover as much horizontal space
as possible, the only direction left to explore is up.
The media saturation, however, had a negative impact on breaking. Exposed to
the world, dislocated from its home in the Bronx, and represented in clips and snatches
that did not convey the full impact of the art of the b-boy, it had been distilled and
homogenized, offered as aerobics classes at gyms and at dance workshops in middle
America. At the same time, changing cinematic tastes and the rise of home video
moved kung-fu out of theaters. Once again, the hero had left town, and he took his
disciples with him. But he did not disappear; he simply went, in b-boy parlance,
“underground,” out of the public eye. He rose again in the early 1990s; “despite having
been almost completely ignored by the mainstream press, Hong Kong cinema attracted
a cult following.” Fans came out of the woodwork, celebrating the kung-fu hero with a
50
“mixture of awe, aggressiveness and proselytizing zeal. A popular cinema gave birth to
a popular fan culture. Subterranean tastes helped push” the kung-fu hero into the
mainstream. David Bordwell asks, “How could this happen?”, and his very choice of
words provides an answer. 171
Clearly, kung-fu movies had meaningful significance for hip hop culture since the
first kung-fu cowboy, Kwai Chang Caine, strode across the television screen. Hip hop
never abandoned the kung-fu hero; he lived on in breaking, rap lyrics, and the attitudes
shared by the hip hop culture. By the early 1990s, “underground” (subterranean) hip
hop artists, building on the popularity of late-eighties groups like NWA, were gaining
entry to mainstream channels. Rappers like Jeru the Damaja, Fu-Schnickens, UMCs,
and Special Ed laced their albums with Buddhist philosophy, Shaolin mysticism, and
kung-fu technique metaphors.172
But even without the above-mentioned performers, the most popular of the
newly-risen underground groups, the Wu-Tang Clan, a New York City collective of
rappers, likely would have brought the kung-fu hero back to popularity single-handedly.
The name of their group was taken from a rival monastery to Shaolin; the members took
on names of kung-fu characters such as Ghost-faced Killer (from Mystery of ChessBoxing, also the name of one of the Clan’s hit singles), Master Killer (from 36th
Chamber), and the Abbot, adopted as an honorific by the leader of the group, Prince
Rakeem, also known as the RZA.173 Their debut album, Enter the 36th Chamber (sound
familiar?), was a smash hit. Like hip hop’s earliest kung-fu heroes, King Boxer and
Chinese Boxer, they spawned untold imitators. By mid-decade, kung-fu films were back
in American theaters. The Wu-Tang Clan bought the rights to many of the old films and
re-released them for the home-video market, and American directors like Quentin
Tarantino injected kung-fu elements into their films.174
Bordwell is right that a popular cinema gave rise to popular fan culture, but the
birth was mediated by hip hop. America did not just suddenly rediscover kung-fu films;
hip hop had been incubating them since the late 1970s, and the kung-fu hero sprang,
fully formed, from the body of hip hop culture like a Chinese Athena. As the kung-fu
hero had helped the youth of New York City survive a rough childhood in the 1970s,
they, once grown, carried him through the lean years of the “ultramodern 1980s,” where
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“myths and legends” had no place. But hip hop, like the Hong Kong cinema that helped
spawn it, “takes to heart the old adage that old [heroes] never die, they just fade away
and reappear.”175 In the meantime, the techniques and tactics were preserved by the
students of the thirty-sixth chamber, the early b-boys of New York City.
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KUNG-FU B-BOYS
We can teach others kung-fu by movie in future.
-Once Upon a Time in China176
Hip hop’s founders drew on widely varied sources in creating new, self-affirming
expressions of creative individuality and group solidarity through graphic, musical, and
dance modes. Hip hop dance, and b-boying (or breaking) in particular, was influenced
by the broad spectrum of movement styles in American culture. Dance historians have
done a thorough job of linking b-boying to African movement and placing it firmly in the
continuum of African diasporic dance. However, the impact of other cultures and their
views on the meaning of movement in hip hop remains underappreciated. Foremost in
this category of overlooked origins are the Chinese martial arts films of the 1970s.
These kung-fu films were an important agent in the transmission of Asian
philosophic and aesthetic values, particularly in the birthplace of b-boying, New York
City. Seen either in theaters or on television’s “Kung Fu Theater”—which was “for many
African Americans… staple weekend viewing”—these movies were one of the strongest
influences on the early development of breaking.177 After all, the kung-fu film has an
“ongoing interest in the process of learning, the transmission (and embodiment) of
knowledge, the relationship between masters and their disciples”—that is, the kung-fu
hero and his audience.178
The kung-fu hero’s significance may indeed be larger than some of the
traditionally credited roots of breaking, such as Angolo-Brazilian capoeira, or West
African dance instruction in the schools of New York City in the 1970’s.179 Many writers
on the subject seem intent on maintaining an African homogeneity in b-boying’s origins,
almost to the point of willful ignorance of the significance of other influences. Were they
53
to investigate more fully the influences on hip hop, they may find that their theories are
not only misguided, but met with disdain by the founders of the culture.
Legendary b-boy Crazy Legs, one of the founders of the Rock Steady Crew,
emphatically denies those theories: “We didn’t know what the fuck no capoeira was,
man. We were in the ghetto! There were no dance schools, nothing. If there was a
dance school it was tap and jazz and ballet. I only saw one dance school in my life in
the ghetto during that time, and it was on Van Nest Avenue in the Bronx and it was a
ballet school.”180 Occasionally someone will look outside the capoeira/West African
tradition, and extend some credit to sources such as television programs and other
popular culture elements for their impact. But even then, scholars tend to focus on
either the emulation of African American performers (Fred “Rerun” Berry in television’s
What’s Happening) or white entertainers’ portrayals of African characters (Steve
Martin’s “King Tut” sketch on Saturday Night Live).181
Were they to expand their horizons beyond the realm of African roots, they would
recognize the connection between Chinese martial arts films and dance. Legendary
Chinese director King Hu has commented that he has “always taken the action part of
[his] films as dancing rather than fighting…A lot of people in Hong Kong have
misunderstood [him], and have remarked that [his] action scenes are sometimes
‘authentic’ and sometimes not. In point of fact, they’re always keyed to the notion of
dance.”182 Hu’s cinematic vision inspired a whole generation of martial arts directors,
instructors, and choreographers, and it should be easy to see how a hungry group of
youths in turn were inspired by them. “As far as the martial arts goes,” agrees b-boy
Kwon of Swift Kids, “[the films] gave a lot of b-boys ideas as far as doing things on the
floor and expanding their ideas for movement and bringing out their character.”183 But
the focus seems to remain blindly on exclusively African roots.
Katrina Hazzard-Donald is representative of this tendency. In her essay “Dance
in Hip Hop Culture” she traces hip hop’s evolution from African through African
American tradition, via both personal contacts and the media channels mentioned
above. She then discusses ways that hip hop spread to such far-flung locations as
Cuba and Sri Lanka, primarily through mechanisms of “the popular-culture market and
industry,” television and videotapes, which she cites as “sources of cultural
54
transference.”184 Hazzard-Donald fails to consider, however, that the influence on
breaking through the importing of these sources was as significant as the influence of
breaking through their export, confirming Amy Abugo Ongiri’s statement that “African
American interest in martial arts films is an often anecdotally pronounced but rarely
explored cultural phenomena (sic).”185
The kung-fu/b-boy connection is not only overlooked by historians of African
American dance, but also by scholars working on Chinese martial arts. Sek Kei set the
tone in 1980: “Years of evolution have shifted the emphasis of Chinese martial
arts…their martial skills were more often exhibited as entertainment than used in
combat.” He points out that they have been “adapted into such forms as ceremonial
celebrations (lion dance, dragon dance)” and “amalgamated with music, dance, and
acrobatics into a form of performing arts in the theatre: scenes of combat, of course,
lend themselves to elaborate spectacle…. No comparable phenomenon exists
elsewhere in the world.”186 Obviously, Sek had not yet encountered b-boying in Hong
Kong in 1980, but his statement also fails to consider other combat-cum-dance forms
such as capoeira.187 More relevantly, neither American dance scholars nor Chinese film
scholars consider the relationship between kung-fu films and hip hop, and the battlestyled b-boy contests that developed in hip hop culture. This influence deserves further
consideration.
Perhaps the only kung-fu movie that has been even briefly considered in terms of
its direct influence on breaking is Jackie Chan’s 1978 hit Drunken Master. The unique
movements of the technique that Chan practices in the film—he seems inebriated,
obviously—makes it stand out when encountered in a dance setting. Sally Sommer
highlights the link in her unreleased documentary work-in-progress Check Your Body at
the Door, interweaving clips of Chan’s performance with footage of house dancers in
New York in the mid-nineties, one of the few pieces of research to engage the kung-fu
film as an influence on popular dance. In an ironic twist, further investigation reveals
that what seems to be a migration of movement from movie screen to dance floor was
actually a migration from dance floor to movie screen.
Hong Kong critic Ng Ho found it a “major irony that what today’s audiences are
shown in kung-fu comedies really are flowery tricks with little or no practical application,
55
and yet audiences accept them whole-heartedly. In Drunken Master, for example, the
Zui Quan (Drunken Fist) technique is not an authentic martial art; much of it actually
resembles contemporary pop dance styles.”188 It is highly unlikely that Ng was mistaken
in his assessment of the direction of influence, as his article, published in the Hong
Kong International Film Festival proceedings from 1980, was adapted from three
articles published in early 1979.189 On the other hand, the first media coverage of
breaking was the Village Voice article of 1981. B-boying had yet to begin its rapid
spread around the globe; it is apparent that the technique in Drunken Master must have
come from Asian dance floors, and moved through the celluloid medium to the
improvised cardboard performance spaces of New York. Thus, b-boys were influenced
by not only Asian cinema, but by Asian pop dance; the irony is heightened by the fact
that by the time the b-boys were done with the movement, they had transformed it into a
more “authentic” representation of kung-fu than either the Asian dancers or auteurs had
originally achieved. But these snippets of Drunken Master were far from the only kungfu connection.
Although hundreds of Chinese kung-fu films were released in the US, this
focused examination of the link between kung-fu and b-boy movement will concentrate
on two well-received late-seventies films to demonstrate the integral role the kung-fu
aesthetic played in the codification of b-boy style. Seven Grandmasters (1978) serves
as a perfect example of the degree to which kung-fu cinema saturated the lives of early
hip hop figures. In David Toop’s Rap Attack, praised at publication in 1984 as “the most
authoritative book yet on the New York street phenomenon,” the section on hip hop
founding father Grandmaster Flash begins with a photo of a Times Square movie
theater; the marquee features two kung-fu films, one of which is Seven
Grandmasters.190 The cast of that film reunited the following year to make Mystery of
Chess-Boxing, so popular that “when first released on New York’s 42nd Street…[it]
caused near riots and played for two years.”191 This film’s significance is reflected in a
hit 1993 rap song, “The Mystery of Chess-Boxing,” from the Wu Tang Clan’s debut
album, Enter the 36th Chamber, named after Lau Kar-Leung’s seminal film. Movies
such as these played a fundamental role in the development and solidification of
movement and meaning in hip hop dance.
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First, it is clear that what was established as the pattern of a b-boy sequence is
rooted firmly in kung-fu choreography. As identified by Robert Farris Thompson, this
pattern is “entry (rapid-fire stepping), break (down to the hands), swipes (the ground
gymnastics imparting momentum and special flair), spins (on the hands, the back, the
shoulders, the head, and other body parts), finishing with a freeze and then an exit
(returning the performer to verticality).”192 This is, without deviation, the standard
construction of a battle sequence in kung-fu films. Take, for instance, Executioners
from Shaolin. The film, another from 36th Chamber director Lau Kar-Leung, begins with
“the type of ‘abstract’ pre-credit martial arts sequence which has practically become
Liu’s trademark”: two martial artists battling in unarmed combat before the film
begins.193 To Roger Garcia, “The principal axes of the film are established by the
cinematic off pre-credit sequence which is totally devoid (in the experiential realm) of
any circumstantial sense; it has no anterior context, only the programmation of two men
whose method of communication is physical (i.e. kung-fu speech, a dialogue enunciated
through the shifts and progression of stylistic patterns).”194 It is, in other words, an
encapsulated b-boy battle, captured and complete before the body of the film even
begins.195
The entry is more complex than simply proceeding into the combative space. It
is preceded by a challenge, whether spoken or verbal. As honorable opponents, the
two combatants size each other up before engaging.196 Part of this is psychological, as
the fighter coolly assesses the situation, radiating a calm and confidence notifying his
counterpart that he is secure in his ability to prevail. Bruce Lee was a master of the art,
cocking his head to one side or the other, sidling casually in a circle around them, rolling
his eyes in disgust. He showed “undisguised contempt…for unworthy opponents”;
Stephen Teo termed it “visual braggadocio.”197 B-boys pay tribute to Lee’s mastery of
this art with moves such as “The Muggsy,” which creator Ken Swift says came directly
from Bruce Lee’s movements.198 The other facet of the size up is tactical, observing the
opponent for any clues as to what style he may use. This is a crucial element, as the
ability to anticipate, counter, and respond to the opponent’s moves is required in order
to win.199
57
Then the physical phase of the competition begins. In both kung-fu and
breaking, the initial step into the contested space is made in one of two ways.
Sometimes it is a smooth, sideways slide into the circle, with fast footwork keeping the
fighter nimble and mobile. Physically, this entry presents a small target to the opponent,
as the surface of the turned body is minimized, and the hard, muscled shoulder and hip
precede and protect the contestant. This is a stance equally disposed to attack and
retreat; the fighter can rapidly approach his opponent, or just as rapidly withdraw to
avoid a sudden flurry of blows. The sideways entry is generally used when the
performer is starting slowly, beginning with basic movements to “feel out” the level of his
opponent, and is most common when the two fighters are unfamiliar with each other’s
styles.
The entry is much more dramatic when the combatants’ styles are pronounced.
When familiar with the technique used by an opponent, the performer, knowing what is
expected, can engage the ‘enemy’ on his own terms. This usually results in an
aggressive entry with more flair—a spinning twist, a front or reverse flip, or a flying
leap—and an initial stance squarely facing the opponent. With legs spread and knees
bent, this aggressive entry pose is not designed for retreat. It is the entry of a confident
contestant, ready to spring forward or rapidly circle the opponent laterally. It is a
declaration of superiority, an attempt to claim an early advantage in the battle by
intimidating the opponent from the beginning.
In b-boying, this pattern is also present. Initial rounds of a battle generally begin
slowly, the breakers gliding into the middle of the circle for a few minutes of exploratory
footwork before moving on to the breakdown and the freeze. After the first few cycles of
contestants are complete, dancers begin flying in to the circle, challenging, responding
to, and signifying on the movements of the previous b-boy, often before he has even left
the space.200 In kung-fu terms, this is the equivalent of recognizing not only the
opponent’s style, but the fact that the opponent presents no unknown threat. The
challenger is ready to dismantle his opponent; there is no timidity or caution in the
aggressive entry.
The entry step flows smoothly into footwork in the circle, preparation for the
aggressive spins, turns, and twists that engage the contestants in actual combat.
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These combative moves are one of the two most important contributions of kung fu films
to hip hop dance, second only to the freeze. Although dropping low to the ground and
spinning is by no means unique to kung-fu, it is the method and approach that
differentiates them from the “breakdown” characteristic of African American movement
or capoeira. Stylistically, breaking differs from capoeira in its rhythms. The Brazilian
dance/martial art has a fluid, circular style, with each movement maintaining a flow of
continuity into the next move. The performer rarely breaks the constant motion. In bboying, however, the breakdown is angular and broken, not necessarily following a
predictable rhythmic pattern. A spin or twist to the side can instantly stop and abruptly
reverse direction, or morph into a completely different move. This is the way of kung-fu:
angular forms that yield to other angular forms.
The traditional spins of breaking all appear in kung-fu, without needing any
interpretation to see them. As Lil’ Lep explains, the films directly translated to dance for
his crew, the New York City Breakers: “Kung fu movies were important, because we
learned from them. You know Flip ( Flip Rock AKA Bobby Potts), he does a lot of flips,
and they do a lot of flips in kung-fu movies. You know my man Chino (AKA Action), he
does a lot of flips too. My thing is my swipes, headspins.”201 Mr. Wiggles adds that, “If
you look at [fellow Rock Steady b-boy] Frosty [Freeze], with the back-flips, you can see
the kung-fu influence.”202 The various styles of flips were a popular subject for
appropriation, but were far from being the only borrowed techniques. Some of the
moves, such as kneespins and backspins, could be used as defensive moves, keeping
the opponent at bay.203 Their rapid rotations prevent approach, thereby enabling the
performer to claim a personal space in which to move. They do not, however, offer any
opportunity for offensive action; the contestant must proceed to another move in order
to press the attack. Other spins do not exhibit this weakness. In particular, flares and
windmills are simultaneously defensive and offensive. While the outstretched legs of
these rapid spinning moves enlarge the sphere occupied by the performer, they also
present potentially lethal weapons in the form of whirling feet.
These spins, turns, and flips are a crucial element of personal style; they are
what establish both the kung-fu master and the b-boy as skilled performers. The
footwork is difficult and intricate, but can be learned more easily. The acrobatic stunts
59
and spins of more advanced performers are what differentiate them from the average.
When Mr. Wiggles, of Rock Steady Crew, says that he wants to slam a move on the
sidewalk so that it “splats” and people remember it, he is not just saying that he wants to
leave his mark.204 A signature move, in something as ephemeral as dance or kung-fu,
visually melts as soon as it is completed. Ironically, though, these signature moves are
what grant the performer legendary status. In the world of movement, it is not the
motion that is important so much as the memory of that motion in the collective
consciousness, and the governing mythology that surrounds the move or moves. As a
bystander says during the battle between the lead character in Seven Grandmasters,
Tsang Kwan Chung (played by Jack Long), and the Monkey Master, “Everyone knows
Tsang Kwan Chung uses the Pai Mei technique…He became champion because of
those strikes—they made his reputation.”205 His skill has preceded him—he has
achieved mythic status through his movement.
Even viewers who have never seen a legendary, heroic figure in person know
what to expect because of his reputation as the master of a certain style. It is this status
that keeps him involved in challenges and battles, and draws contenders to his title. In
the b-boy documentary The Freshest Kids, b-boy Crazy Legs perfectly expresses the
link between the legendary status of the kung-fu masters and the view within the
breaking community of other b-boys: “You hear of someone breaking in another area,
you’d be like, alright, cool, let’s go over there. It’s like the martial arts films—‘I heard
your style is good, but mine is better.’ And you go there, and you test their style.”206 It
is a culture where status is held by skill alone.
The peak of that status, and the single most significant stylistic element of
breaking drawn from kung-fu, is embodied in the freeze. This is the conclusion of a bboy’s sequence in the performance circle, and was the most important part of the
breaker’s repertoire before hip hop’s commodification by mainstream media shifted the
focus to the stunts and spins, which made for better film images. The freeze, after all, is
static, a held pose that offers little appeal to a moving format. In the ritualized combat of
breaking, based on the highly choreographed fight scenes of kung-fu films, the freeze
was the sine qua non of the b-boy.
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In the context of kung-fu cinema, the freeze plays two roles. Many kung-fu films
ended on an abrupt freeze immediately following the death of the villain in the final
combat scene, even if it meant “leaving other plot elements dangling.” Often the scene
would freeze just as the killing blow was about to strike home. Alternately, the camera
would stop on the victor or victors, a look of serene satisfaction on their faces for a job
well-done in ridding the world of a villain. But in either case, the sudden final-shot
freeze-frame allowed filmmakers to “hold the viewer to the very last moment…the last
shot of Fist of Fury proved so dramatic that the halted final image became a firm local
convention.”207 So much of a convention, in fact, that the freeze took on a new
significance in kung-fu films.
Freezes began to appear frequently even in battles that were not intended to end
in physical death. They often appear in challenge matches, such as those in Seven
Grandmasters. In this film, Tsang Kwan Chung travels throughout China, testing his
skills against recognized masters of various styles, in order to establish himself as the
national champion. As the opponents engage each other, technique after technique is
blocked, counterattacks are made, and the combatants play off of each other’s moves in
an effort to launch an attack for which the other is not prepared. Because the object of
these fights is to settle supremacy, not death, when the critical opening presents itself,
Tsang Kwan Chung immediately makes what would be a fatal move, yet stops the blow
just before impact. He could have finished the fight physically, but demonstrating simply
that he had the opportunity to land a fatal strike, had he chosen to take it, is enough to
end the battle. Additionally, it shows a high degree of mental and physical discipline to
be able to selectively stop attacks in the midst of heated combat.208
The freeze also commonly appears when one of the combatants is clearly
overmatched and the superior martial artist does not want to hurt him to end the battle.
The standard kung-fu plot line features not only a master and his opponents or
enemies, but also what one might call the master’s “crew,” students who wish to learn
his style. In Mystery of Chess-Boxing, as in many of the ‘classic’ kung-fu films, there
are training sequences interspersed between the main fights, during which the master
imparts his techniques to his pupils. In these training fights, the teacher easily and
repeatedly overcomes the students’ feeble defenses, pausing his motion at critical
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moments to show where the student has failed. These freezes, too, carry a sense of
superiority, as the novice is humbled by a vastly better fighter.
The freeze is a metaphoric death, a controlled fatality, a move that makes it
obvious to both the participants in the contest and to viewers that the battle is over. It is
a strike so vital, so creative, so strong, that all question as to the outcome is erased.
One can choose to ignore it and continue battling, but everyone watching knows that
the battle continues only because of the generosity and restraint of the fighter who
chose not to deliver a lethal stroke. The fighter has symbolically killed his opponent; in
b-boy parlance, one would say that he “killed” that move. In making the case for the
origins of the freeze, these films must be given priority. Although Thompson attempts to
link the freeze to such sources as the “move-and-freeze sequences in the jazz dance
and the Harlem mambo ‘picture step’ of the fifties,” those movements do not show the
same aggression, impact, or import as the kung-fu freeze.209
Visually and metaphorically, b-boy style has much more in common with the
freezes of their kung-fu heroes than with the hoary dances of the breakers’
grandparents. B-boy freezes tend to take one of two forms. The first is a suspended
attack as in kung-fu; for example, freezing with arms outstretched in mid-punch or
stopping post-spin on the ground, legs poised in position to launch a lethal kick.
Although obviously physically intimidating, they also convey a sense of ridicule and
disrespect for the opponent, “You are not prepared for my technique; your style is too
weak.” This aggressive freeze is physically humbling, particularly damning in a culture
built on personal strength, skill, and vitality.
The second type, the derisive freeze, is psychologically humiliating. The villain in
Mystery of Chess-Boxing, the “Ghost-Faced Killer,” kicks his opponent powerfully to the
ground. As he writhes in agony, Ghost-Face turns away, clasps his hands behind his
back, and laughs—to continue fighting someone so inferior would be a joke. In another
scene, he crouches on one leg, crosses the other over his knee, rests an elbow on his
thigh, and props his chin in his hand, as if to say, “I could even defeat you sitting down.”
The derisive freeze is a pose of ridicule and disdain. A common version of this freeze
done by b-boys is often compared to pin-up poster girls’ seductive sprawling, but these
coy, reclining positions are also common in kung-fu films, and the comedies in
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particular.210 This style of freeze is usually done in the films by a kung-fu comic, such
as the mischievous student Ah-Po in Mystery of Chess-Boxing, after he has escaped a
potentially dangerous situation. Other b-boy freezes, such as miming grabbing the
opponents crotch and then “discovering” that one’s hand comes away with a foul odor,
are also rooted in kung-fu comedies, and clearly carry the same disrespect for one’s
opponent. The defeated contestant is unworthy of serious effort; they deserve to be
exposed as a fraud.
Skill and style to execute these techniques were personally developed according
to taste and ability. Just as some b-boys specialized in footwork, some in stunts, and
some in freezes, the kung-fu films taught that “each man needs his own style, one that
suits him. Any wise man chooses one matching his abilities. No man can learn them
all.”211 But all styles had to be studied; to be confronted by an opponent with an
unfamiliar style was to run the risk of losing before the battle even began. This attitude,
requiring familiarity with a virtually unlimited kinetic vocabulary, brought many new
movement styles to breaking. In learning the different techniques in the films
considered here, the students go through numerous training sequences. In slow
motion, or in repeated training sessions, the pupils emulate the rapid moves of the
skilled master, “breaking down” the kung-fu styles step by step. Kung-fu films were, in
this way, video instruction manuals for b-boys, fonts of knowledge to be drawn upon.
While capoeira does have some similarities to hip hop movement, there were
virtually no step-by-step descriptions of it, or any other exotic movements, available to
the poor masses at large in New York City. But for the price of a movie ticket, or an
afternoon in front of the television, there were laid bare the internal workings of kung-fu.
Neither Grandmasters nor Mystery focus solely on spins and stunts. Both films toed
the line of “rigorous plausibility,” and the elaborate choreography remained true to the
roots of ‘classic’ kung-fu styles. Because of this, much time was spent on the complex
patterns of arm and hand sequences.
The arm movements of the Chinese forms were readily adaptable to popping and
locking; Mr. Wiggles’ demonstration of the New York version of the Electric Boogie in
the documentary Everybody Dance Now clearly shows a kung-fu influence. The rapidly
articulated elbows and wrists, blocking moves across the front of the body, and
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asymmetry of the arms are hallmarks of Chinese boxing; many different examples are
demonstrated in Mystery of Chess-Boxing. In Check Your Body at the Door,
vogue/house dance innovators Willie Ninja and Archie Burnett are shown mining an
unidentified kung-fu film for inspiration, showing that the tradition survived through the
1990s. As Burnett points out, “this is the best place to steal some steps, boy.”212
Lower body moves also made the transition from kung-fu to hip hop. When bboys hit the ground and grasp a foot or leg, weaving and twisting their lower limbs
through intricate patterns and variations, they are copying the foot-boxing of kung-fu
films, practiced from a prone position.213 Even the name the b-boys gave these
movements, “threading the needle,” references the naming of kung-fu techniques such
as “splitting the water,” “breaking the knot,” or “carrying the wood.” When the
Floormaster crew’s “Action” performed this style in a circa-1984 clip in The Freshest
Kids, he might as well have been demonstrating guest star Sam Seed’s defensive
tactics from Mystery of Chess-Boxing. Ken Swift admits direct inspiration from the films,
particularly Seven Grandmasters, in creating and naming new moves. “The brother
[Jack Long] was on the floor, and he grabbed his hands and he pulled and he slid on his
butt, and he kicked this dude,” he says. “I have a forearm glide that I do, called ‘flowing
downstream’ that was inspired by the film.”214
The stunts and spins of kung-fu were even more directly translated to breaking.
Lil’ Lep’s New York City Breakers crew was not the only group to appropriate the moves
of the kung-fu heroes; b-boy Ray gives the films credit for directly influencing his
Brooklyn-based Floormaster Dancers as well. “Kung fu played a part in my life,” he
says. “You see the styles they had, they spin on their heads, like b-boying, they had
windmills, they were doing the helicopter, which is the swipe. We looked at these things,
we used it as dance.”215 Every prominent b-boy power move is present in kung-fu
cinema, and most are contained in the two movies considered here. Headspins,
backspins, windmills, flares, suicides, helicopters and numerous other leg sweeps—all
are demonstrated with precision by Jack Long. In a nod to Lau Kar-Leung’s films, Kuo
opens Mystery of Chess Boxing with an elaborate, pre-credit combat sequence between
Long and Lee Yi Min, who plays his pupil in both films, featuring a dizzying array of
moves that translated directly into the b-boy repertoire. Not only did breakers copy the
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fancy spinning attacks, they also absorbed the innovative evasion tactics, leaping falls
that create a separation between contestants which allows the performer to regroup. In
one specific sequence in Mystery of Chess-Boxing, Long spins away from his opponent,
leaps high into the air and backwards, lands flat on his back, and kicks his legs high,
undulating his body in a wave which ends with him up on his feet.216 Rock Steady
Crew’s Frosty Freeze kinetically quotes the move in the breaking scene featured in
Flashdance.
Besides the sheer physical similarities of kung-fu choreography and b-boying, the
lessons and philosophies in the films saturated the b-boy mindset. What was important
to the warrior in the cobblestone streets of Qing Dynasty China resonated with early
breakers. In establishing oneself as a renowned martial master, one had to have
personal strength, physically and mentally, to overcome the many obstacles on the path
to success. The hero of these films traditionally was from the lower class, often injured
or intimidated by the forces of the corrupt government. Physical strength was
necessary to combat these oppressors, but strength of spirit was also vital, to avoid the
danger of using that physical power for selfish reasons. The kung-fu master was a local
cultural hero, struggling against overwhelming odds. To poor kids in the ghettoes of
New York in the 1970’s, the appeal of a mythic figure rising from the underclass to
defend and represent his people is clear; as Ken Swift points out, it is important to
recognize “the influence of kung-fu, of martial arts, of kung-fu movies” in hip hop’s
development.217 The martial artist relied solely upon devices which were available to
these youths—strength, skill, style, creativity—in making a name for himself.
Themes of social justice and resistance of oppression were standard in Hong
Kong film. American film heroes by the 1970s were either white—frequently members
of the oppressive governmental structure, such as Clint Eastwood’s “Dirty Harry”
character—or they were black, but oversexed and overblown, the “Fighting and Fuckin’
Super-Negros” of blaxploitation films like Sweet Sweetback's Baadassss Song and
Superfly.218 The martial arts films presented African-American and Latino residents of
the inner city with strong, moral heroes who were able to overcome their circumstances
by dint of courage and effort. Armed only with their cunning, wit, and determination,
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these heroes countered the overwhelming, uncaring forces of the government, and
claimed a space for themselves in their environment.
Kung-fu movies provided a virtual training academy for those interested in
discipline of the body as an avenue for personal growth, and the characters in them
served as “video-mentors” for youths lacking a strong family support network. Their
“focus on virtue lost and found, individual determination, righteous vengeance, and
community struggle against all odds…helped to create the martial arts as the ultimate
tool of the righteous but wronged ‘little guy’, and goes a long way towards explaining an
African-American interest in martial arts culture.”219 Although Ongiri’s article only
addressed martial arts films’ influence on African-Americans, in the cultural mélange of
New York City, the boundaries between African-American, African-Caribbean, and
Latino cultures were porous at best. Sek Kei summed up the cultural value of kung-fu
films thus:
Martial arts films can be said to be analogous to the Hong Kong situation.
Born of boundless energy in less than favourable conditions, they have
managed to carve out a niche for themselves and become one of the most
prolific, resourceful, and fast-paced cinemas in the world. By juxtaposing
Eastern and Western elements, the old and the new, they have evolved an
idiosyncratic style and developed it to a remarkable degree. They have,
in fact, elevated the reputation of the Chinese martial arts world, a tradition
hitherto disdained even by the average Chinese.220
With the exchange of a few terms—“martial arts films” for “hip hop,” “Chinese martial
arts world” for “poor neighborhoods of New York City,” and “Chinese” for “American”—
he could be talking about the b-boy, the United States’ most recent incarnation of arête,
the hip-hop hero. Interest in Chinese cinema was shared across nation, ethnic, and
cultural boundaries, particularly by the founders of hip hop. No group internalized,
developed, and re-formulated kung-fu films more effectively, nor more eloquently, than
the early b-boys.221
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CONCLUSION
Hip hop and b-boying did not develop in an insular community, from a closed
lineage of African and African-American tradition. It was born in the frontier streets of
New York City in the 1970s, nurtured by youths living in one of the most dense,
multiculturally rich settings in history. In that diverse environment, the struggles for
individuality, success, and respect led to a resurfacing of the universal elements of
humanity’s search for heroes. For seventy-five years, the cowboy had been the hero to
whom American youth turned for inspiration. His popularity waned, though, as he
struggled to reconcile his mythological past with changing attitudes about his historical,
decidedly unheroic, treatment of minorities.
Culture upheaval in the US combined with conflict abroad to finally defeat the
quintessential American hero in the late 1960s. In 1969, Marshall Fishwick’s
investigation of The Hero, American Style concluded that, “Western man lives at a time
where most old myths have lost their mana and power…. When an old mythology
disintegrates, a new one originates. To survive is to remythologize. Instead of
discovering a new mythos, we find ourselves participating in it.” That is what the youth
movements of the sixties were doing, with “their new tactics, songs, morals, haircuts.
They will bury not only us,” he predicted, “but our worn-out mythology, too.”222 Fishwick
was a bit pessimistic. The old mythology was not buried; the common traits of heroism
are too strong to be abandoned. But it was stripped, shaved, reclothed, and brought
back in the kung-fu hero. Young people who had lost the trail of the cowboy found a
new idol in kung-fu films. These new heroes picked up where the cowboy left off. Their
exotic origins belied their place in the heroic tradition, while making them more
accessible than the cowboy to minority audiences. In New York in particular, the kungfu hero took root, teaching a whole new generation the rules of heroic behavior.
67
Westerns as a genre lost their appeal when they changed too much, became too
physical at the expense of philosophy, too dark at the expense of holding promise about
the betterment of humankind, and too violent at the expense of introspection. Kung-fu
films filled the void left by the disappearance of the cowboy, although they too
eventually fell into decline for the same reasons—better stunts, but less psychology;
better choreography, but less kung-fu; more theatrics, but less moral gravity. But during
his heyday, the kung-fu hero had a dramatic impact on early hip hop culture. In
particular, he was a leading figure in shaping the philosophy and aesthetics of b-boys, a
group of kids who continue to influence American, and world, culture.223
68
NOTES:
1
The Freshest Kids, directed by Israel (New York: Brotherhood Films, 2002).
For general works on hip hop and hip hop history, see David Toop, Rap Attack 3:
From African Rap to Global Hip Hop (London: Serpent’s Tail, 2000); Jeff Chang, Can’t
Stop Won’t Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation (New York: St. Martin’s Press,
2005), or the early work by Curtis Marlow, Breakdancing (Cresskill, NJ:
Starbook/Sharon Publications, 1979).
3
For examples of traditional views of b-boying’s origination from these sources, see
“The History of Breakdancing” in Curtis Marlow, Breakdancing (Cresskill, NJ:
Starbook/Sharon Publications, 1979), and William Eric Perkins, ed., Droppin’ Science:
Critical Essays on Rap Music and Hip Hop Culture (Philadelphia: Temple University
Press, 1996), in particular Robert Farris Thompson’s “Hip Hop 101” and Katrina
Hazzard-Donald’s “Dance in Hip Hop Culture.”
4
Nelson George, Hip Hop America (New York: Penguin, 1998): 105-6.
5
Sally Banes, “Breaking,” in That’s the Joint! The Hip-Hop Studies Reader, eds. Murray
Foreman and Mark Anthony Neal (New York: Routledge, 2004): 18.
6
Michael Holman, “Breaking,” in That’s the Joint! The Hip-Hop Studies Reader, eds.
Murray Foreman and Mark Anthony Neal (New York: Routledge, 2004): 39.
7
Members of the culture have never referred to themselves as “breakdancers,” nor to
the dance as “breakdancing.” They are “b-boys” or “b-girls,” “breakers,” or “breakers”;
the dance is “b-boying,” “breaking,” or simply “going off” (as in “going off on the break,”
although that is a dated phrase that has largely fallen out of use.
8
The cowboy, too, made his mark in early hip hop, albeit not as dramatically as the
kung-fu hero, demonstrating the impact of the heroic lineage behind the kung-fu warrior.
In contrast to the kung-fu hero, the laconic cowboy hero ironically was primarily
incorporated by hip hop lyricists: one of Grandmaster Flash’s Furious Five MCs even
went by the name Cowboy. The Sugarhill Gang recorded “Apache” in 1981. It
referenced, among other things, the Battle of Little Big Horn, Geronimo, and western
films in lines like “My tribe went down in the hall of fame, ‘cause I’m the one who shot
Jesse James.” The cowboy hero continues to show up periodically in hip hop. A very
brief timeline includes the Beastie Boys’ “Paul Revere” (1986), Kool Moe Dee’s “Wild
Wild West” (1987), Gangstarr’s “I’m the Man” (1992), Jeru the Damaja’s “Black
Cowboys” (1996), and Sadat X’s 1996 album Wild Cowboys.
9
Edward Tabor Linenthal, Changing images of the warrior hero in America: a history of
popular symbolism (New York: E. Mellon, 1982): xv.
10
Joseph Campbell’s The Hero with a Thousand Faces (originally published in 1949) is
the classic study of the archetypal hero, extracting the universal details of the hero’s
journey and transformation from the numerous mythologies of the world. Campbell’s
goal was to “bring together a host of myths and folk tales from every corner of the world,
2
69
and to let the symbols speak for themselves. The parallels will be immediately
apparent; and these will develop a vast and amazingly constant statement of the basic
truths by which man has lived throughout the millenniums of his residence on this
planet” (from his introduction). By any measure, it was a resounding success, and
subsequent scholars studying “the hero” have used Campbell’s work as a guide. In The
Mortal Hero, Seth L. Schein analyzes Homer’s Iliad, the work upon which much of
Western literary tradition is built; he investigates the devices and techniques through
which the heroic character is fully realized, useful for any study of heroism. Linenthal’s
Changing images of the warrior hero in America is a useful update, and places him in
the context American popular culture. The Hero in Transition, edited by Ray Browne
and prolific hero-scholar Marshall Fishwick, is a broadly conceived collection of essays
on the hero in twentieth century America, from film to comic book to soap opera. In an
interesting parallel to Campbell’s groundbreaking work, one of the earliest b-boys, cited
by recognized founders of the culture like Crazy Legs and Mr. Wiggles as perhaps the
most vital originator, was named Spy; he was known as “The Man with a Thousand
Moves.”
11
Linenthal, xv.
12
This will be a primarily male story. The Greek tales tended to feature men in the
heroic roles, just as cowboy movies did; the occasional heroine was anomalous. Kungfu films, in contrast, have a markedly larger female presence in the heroic pantheon (as
does much of Chinese literature—see note 19). Films such as Seven Blows of the
Dragon (1973) and Ten Tigers of Shaolin (1979) featured women as kung-fu heroes, a
trend that still continues (Hero; Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon), although women are
certainly in the minority. And while b-girls have been a part of hip hop since the
beginning, breaking too is predominantly male.
13
Werner W. Jaeger, Paideia: The Ideals of Greek Culture, trans.Gilbert Highet
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986): 5. Jaeger’s three-volume work, originally
published in 1939, used the Greek idea of Paideia, the shaping of Greek character
through a combination of tradition, civilization, philosophy, and literature, as the basis
for his study of Greek history.
14
Linenthal, xv.
15
Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, 2d ed. (New York: Pantheon
Books, 1968): 29.
16
Besides these obvious cases, other American literary heroes often are wanderers on
a journey of self-discovery. Twain (The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn), Kerouac (On
the Road and Dharma Bums), Dreiser (Sister Carrie), Thoreau (Walden), Hawthorne
(The Scarlet Letter), HenryAdams (The Education of Henry Adams), and, more recently
Tom Wolfe (A Man in Full) are but a few examples of the many authors who written
tales of transformation built around travel. Significantly, these stories also incorporate,
in their own way, the concept of a ‘frontier,’ a strange place to which the protagonist
must travel to fully realize his or her own potential for change.
17
Richard Slotkin, Regeneration through Violence: The Mythology of the American
Frontier, 1600-1860 (Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1973): 302-303.
18
Andrew Brodie Smith, Shooting Cowboys and Indians: Silent western films, American
culture, and the birth of Hollywood (Boulder: University Press of Colorado, 2003): 188.
70
19
Frederick Jackson Turner, “The Significance of the Frontier in American History,” in
Does the Frontier Experience Make America Exceptional? ed. Richard W. Etulain
(Boston: Bedford/St. Martins, 1999): 19.
20
Criticism of Turner’s thesis began as early as the 1930s, when Walter Prescott Webb
and former Turner student Herbert Eugene Bolton challenged Turner with alternative
interpretations of the frontier. Questioning of Turner continued intermittently until the
1970s and 1980s, when an explosion of scholars arguing against Turner heavily
damaged the Frontier Thesis. Historians such as Richard White, Donald Worster,
Michael P. Malone, and Limerick attacked Turner’s failure to acknowledge minorities,
women, class, urban and environmental issues, and the history of the west after 1900.
For a brief historiographical discussion, see “Speaking for the Past,” in The Oxford
History of the American West, ed. Clyde A. Milner II et al. (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1994), 743-69. Collections of criticism of Turner’s work can be found in Patricia
Nelson Limerick, Clyde A. Milner II, and Charles E. Rankin, eds., Trails: Toward a New
Western History (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1991) and Gene M. Gressley,
ed., Old West/New West: Quo Vadis? (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1997).
21
Limerick in turn may find it interesting that in the world of the kung-fu hero, on the
other hand, the ‘others’ for which she so strongly pushed in western history already had
a place. In particular, the Chinese have long incorporated women—Leon Hunt points
out that “women warriors are nothing new in Chinese storytelling, and have a much
longer history than their Western counterparts.” (118)
22
Alf H. Walle, The Cowboy Hero and Its Audience (Bowling Green State University
Popular Press, 2000): 91-92. Walle’s interpretation of The Leatherstocking Tales is that
Cooper saw the entire West as a sprawling, inhospitable region completely unsuited for
large-scale habitation, a haven for the noble frontiersman who could not find a
comfortable place in the growing cities of the East. In the great plains of the West, the
frontiersman could finally find a place where civilization would never encroach. Walle’s
reasoning for the decline in Cooper’s popularity is that he failed to foresee the continued
growth of American cities, the ingenuity and determination of American business, and
such advances as the transcontinental railroad, which rendered the vast distances from
East to West coast suddenly less formidable. By the 1890s, the region had “emerged
as just another resource to be harvested, and…had become rather thickly settled.” As a
result, the American reading public viewed Cooper’s vision of history as “grossly
inaccurate,” and sophisticated audiences turned to novelists such as Henry James,
“who focused on the interplay between sophisticated Americans and Europeans.” On
the other hand, James wrote at length about how displaced he felt by the rapid
advances in American and European culture and technology. He would likely have felt
more at home in the world of Cooper’s hero than in the world of the readers whom
Walle claims turned to James for a sense of modernity. Walle’s hypothesis is thus
somewhat problematic, but does give hints as to why Cooper fell into disfavor.
23
Ibid, 92.
24
For example, Thoreau in Walden, Emerson (particularly the essay “Self-Reliance”),
and Henry Adams’ struggle to reconcile his view of “classic” America with the rapidlychanging reality of American life in The Education of Henry Adams.
71
25
Ralph Waldo Emerson, “The American Scholar,” Address to Phi Beta Kappa Society,
Cambridge, MA, August 31, 1837. In his speech, Emerson demands for American
scholarship bear many similarities to the American frontier spirit. He felt that the full
worth of a scholar could only be attained if one nurtured a sense of self-trust, espoused
bravery and freedom, and cherished the individual instead of the masses: “if the single
man plant himself indomitably on his instincts, and there abide, the huge world will
come round to him…. [It is] not the chief disgrace in the world, not to be an unit; — not
to be reckoned one character… but to be reckoned in the gross, in the hundred, or the
thousand, of the party, the section, to which we belong…. We will walk on our own feet;
we will work with our own hands; we will speak our own minds.”
26
Walle, 94.
27
Lee Clark Mitchell, “’When You Call Me That…’: Tall Talk and Male Hegemony in
The Virginian,” PMLA 102, n. 1(January 1987): 66.
28
Walle, 96.
29
Brian Garfield, Western Films: A Complete Guide (New York: Rawson Associates,
1982): xii.
30
“Hopalong Cassidy: The Legend,” <www.hopalong.com/legend.htm>. Accessed
April 11, 2005.
31
Kevin S. Blake, “Zane Grey and Images of the American West,” Geographical
Review 85, n. 2 (April 1995): 204-206.
32
Walle, 148.
33
Zane Grey, “A Plea for Westerns,” Modern Screen Magazine, December 1932.
Quoted in Walle, 148.
34
Jeffrey Wallmann, The Western: Parables of the American Dream (Lubbock, Texas:
Texas Tech University Press, 1999): 31.
35
Daryl Jones, The Dime Novel Western (Bowling Green, Ohio: Bowling Green State
University Press, 1978): 155.
36
Wallmann, 31-32.
37
Andrew Brodie Smith, Shooting Cowboys and Indians (Boulder: University Press of
Colorado, 2003), 188. See also Brian Garfield, Western Films, A Complete Guide, and
James Horowitz, They Went Thataway. This creates an interesting parallel between
cowboy movies and kung-fu films: “For many African Americans throughout the
seventies ‘Kung Fu Theater’ was staple weekend viewing” (Ongiri, 32).
38
David Reisman, The Lonely Crowd (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1950. )
39
Warren Susman, Culture as History: The Transformation of American Society in the
Twentieth Century (New York: Pantheon Books, 1984).
40
Jim Hitt, The American West from fiction into film (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 1990),
294.
41
Pearl Bowser and Louise Spence, “Identity and Betrayal: The Symbol of the
Unconquered and Oscar Micheaux’s ‘Biographical Legend,’” in The Birth of Whiteness,
edited by Daniel Bernardi (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1996), 62.
42
Variety Film Reviews 1907-1980: Volume Three, 1926-1929 (New York: Garland
Publishing, Inc., 1983): 25 January 1928.
43
Stanley Coben, Rebellion against Victorianism : the impetus for cultural change in
1920s America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991): 69-90.
72
44
Hitt, 24. Hitt fails to consider, however, the outbreak of WWII, which surely must have
contributed to the same concerns.
45
Carol Anthill, “Behind the Mask and Mystique of Zorro. Part One: Namesake,”
<http://clioseye.sfasu.edu/ zorrochron.htm>, Clio’s Eye, a Film and Audio Visual
Magazine for the Historian, June 1999. Published online at <http://clioseye.sfasu.edu>.
Accessed April 2, 2005.
46
The Mark of Zorro, directed by Rouben Mamoulian (Hollywood: 20th Century Fox,
1940).
47
James Agee, “Film Reviews,” Time (Oct. 27, 1947): 99. In praising the film, Agee
also lamented that it was “getting such stentorian ballyhoo that a lot of cinemagoers are
likely to think less of it than it deserves.”
48
Richard Slotkin, Gunfighter Nation (New York: Atheneum, 1992): 366-67.
49
Ibid., 367. For a brief discussion of the role of Native Americans in westerns and the
development of the Cult of the Indian, see “Studies in Red and White,” in Slotkin’s
Gunfighter Nation, esp. pages 366-378. Full-length studies of Native Americans and
their treatment in film can be found in Angela Aleiss, Making the White Man’s Indian
(Westport, CT: Praeger, 2005); Armando Jose Prats, Invisible Natives (Ithaca, NY:
Cornell University Press, 2002); Jacquelyn Kilpatrick, Celluloid Indians (Lincoln:
University of Nebraska Press, 1999); Gretchen M. Bataille and Charles L.P. Silet, eds.,
The Pretend Indians (Ames: The Iowa State University Press, 1980); Ralph E. Friar
and Natasha A. Friar, The Only Good Indian…: The Hollywood Gospel (New York:
Drama Book Specialists, 1972).
50
Hitt, 9.
51
Smith, 212.
52
Jane P. Tompkins, West of Everything: The Inner Life of Westerns (New York:
Oxford University Press, 1992): 31.
53
Slotkin, 348.
54
Wallmann, 137.
55
Slotkin, 3.
56
Ibid.
57
Rothman, Hal K.,. LBJ’s Texas White House: Our Heart’s Home (College Station:
Texas A&M University Press, 2001). Electronic edition online at
http://www.nps.gov/lyjo/Ourheartshome. Accessed September 16, 2005.
58
Perhaps her independence and “inner-directed” character were in part due to her
father Henry’s roles in cowboy movies throughout his career—Jesse James, The OxBow Incident, How the West was Won, among many others. Her brother Peter also
followed his own compass in life and in film (Easy Rider, for example).
59
Film noticed this fact as well. Billy Jack, about a half-white, half-Native American exGreen Beret who uses the martial arts skills he learned overseas to defend his
reservation from evil (white) businessmen who want to shut down the reservation
school, and capture all the reservation horses to sell for dog food, is a good example.
60
It only lasted ten months. Rumors later surfaced that its failure was due to the fact
that Lee, in his bit role as Kato, was more popular than the title character.
73
61
Incidentally, both title characters were played by the rapidly-ascending Power, a
coincidence that may justify further investigation, based on the characters’ similar
actions.
62
Slotkin, Gunfighter, 295.
63
Ibid, 297.
64
From Grasshopper to Caine: Creating Kung Fu, documentary special feature
included with Kung Fu The Complete First Season DVD (Warner Home Video, 2004).
Friedlander’s interview on the DVD supports further the connection between kung-fu
heroes and the unique New York setting in which he was adopted as a hip hop
inspiration. “No one knew what kung-fu was,” he remembers, “We were just two kids
from Brooklyn who invented this thing, in a sense.” Within the decade, some other kids
from Brooklyn and the Bronx would use the kung-fu flood Friedlander and Spielman
released to invent new forms of dance and music.
65
Kung Fu pilot movie. First airdate February 22, 1972. Directed by Jerry Thorpe and
written by Ed Spielman & Howard Friedlander. Interestingly, Carradine’s father, John
Carradine, played the role of James Gang member Bob Ford in the 1939 production of
Jesse James. After James retires, Ford shoots him in the back to collect the reward
money, killing the outlaw hero. Three decades later, his son’s role in the hybrid series
Kung Fu helped to finalize the death of the cowboy hero in American popular culture.
66
Kung Fu—The Complete First Season, Warner Home Video, 2004: DVD packaging.
67
“The My Lai Massacre,” Time, November 28, 1969; “My Lai: An American Tragedy,”
Time, December 5, 1969.
68
Slotkin, Gunfighter, 628-631.
69
James Horwitz, They Went Thataway (New York: Dutton, 1976): Introduction.
Horwitz’s book is a combination of scholarly investigation of the impact of westerns on
audience, and memoir of his personal relationship with the genre. It is a general, easy
read, but interesting and informative.
70
Quoted in Hunt, p. 49. “In Hong Kong, David Carradine was known affectionately as
cho man jai (grasshopper boy).”
71
Lau, Shing-Hon, “Introduction,” in A Study of the Hong Kong Martial Arts Film (Hong
Kong: Urban Council, 1980): 3.
72
Leon Hunt, Kung Fu Cult Masters (London: Wallflower Press, 2003): 1.
73
Lau, “Introduction,” 3.
74
Sek Kie, “The Development of ‘Martial Arts’ in Hong Kong Cinema,” in A Study of the
Hong Kong Martial Arts Film (Hong Kong: Urban Council, 1980): 27.
75
Hunt, 1.
76
The original Shaolin temple was located in Henan province, approximately 75 km
southwest of the provincial capital Zhengzhou, at the foot of Shao She Mountain in the
Songshan Mountains. The name comes from Shao (“young” or “new”) and Lin (“forest,”
from the wooded slopes of the mountain). The first temple was built in 495 AD; Ta Mo
arrived in 527. In 1980, Ng Ho wrote with some trepidation about an “alleged” second
temple, integrated with the original, at Jiulianshan in Fujian province, southeast of
Henan. By 1990, it was no longer alleged; archaeologists excavated a large temple
complex in Putian village. In 1992 they concluded it was the Southern Shaolin temple.
74
Various other, minor temples were affiliated with Shaolin throughout history, but it is the
temple in Henan that is usually depicted in the films.
77
The breathing exercises and physical techniques the Ta Mo introduced at the temple
were not new ideas, but he applied them in new ways at the temple. Both China and
India had long traditions of martial skills, and the yogic ideas he brought from India had
been in development for at least two millennia. Tomio Nagabushi, in The Bodhisattva
Warriors (Weiser Books, 1994) traces the origins of kung-fu, in part, to vajramukti, the
Indian corpus of unarmed combat. Interestingly for a study of kung-fu and its influence
on dance, he uses a modern Indian Kathakali dancer to demonstrate the similarities
between Indian movement styles and kung-fu.
78
Hunt, 49.
79
Hunt, 48.
80
Ng Ho, “When Legends Die,” in A Study of the Hong Kong Martial Arts Film (Hong
Kong: Urban Council, 1980): 64.
81
Allan Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac were two of the first to begin studying Buddhism
intellectually, at Columbia, then began incorporating elements of it into their lives at the
urging of West Coast poet Gary Snyder. The Buddhist influence on the Beats took
many forms. Snyder’s poetry was specifically patterned after the method and message
of classical Chinese writing, particularly nature and humanity’s relationship to it. At the
other end of the spectrum was Kerouac, whose writings showed Buddhist elements in
his employment of the travel motif as a journey of personal discovery. His characters
unconcern with money and personal property reflects the Buddhist dictum to avoid
attachment to the temporal world.
82
Lisa Phillips, Beat Culture and the New America, 1950-1965 (New York: Whitney
Museum of American Art, 1995): 39.
83
Stephen Teo, Hong Kong Cinema: The Extra Dimensions (London: British Film
Institute, 1997): 113.
84
Chang Cheh, “Creating the Martial Arts Film and the Hong Kong Cinema Style,” in
Hong Kong Film Archive The Making of Martial Arts Films—As Told by Film-makers and
Stars. (Hong Kong: Provisional Urban Council, 1999): 16. Quoted in Hunt, 6.
85
Hunt, 6-7.
86
Teo, 112.
87
Hunt, 3.
88
Teo, 103.
89
Jeff Yang, Once Upon a Time in China: A Guide to Hong Kong, Taiwanese, and
Mainland Chinese Cinema (New York: Atria Books, 2003): 55.
90
From Grasshopper to Caine: Creating Kung Fu, documentary special feature
included with Kung Fu The Complete First Season DVD (Warner Home Video, 2004).
91
Hunt, 67. Carradine’s plainly-Caucasian Caine is seen as Chinese by everyone in the
program, however.
92
Teo, 104.
93
Hunt, 3.
94
David Desser, “The Kung Fu Craze: Hong Kong Cinema’s First American
Reception,” in David Desser and Poshek Fu, eds., The Cinema of Hong Kong: History,
Arts, Identity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000): 20.
75
95
At least according to the series. There is the obvious exception of Bodhidharma, as
well as others.
96
Esquire, v. LXXX, n. 2, August 1973. This issue had a section devoted to the growing
popularity of kung-fu in the United States, but did not take it seriously and had
dismissive, racist undertones. In describing kung-fu as a martial art, one article points
out that it is called “gung fu in Canton, where all the Chinese in America come from
anyhow” (73). The introduction to the section claimed that many Americans were now
interested in studying “methods of Oriental dirty fighting,” and were “generally carrying
on inscrutably,” repeating the image of Chinese as sneaky, crafty, and dishonest. The
introduction concludes with these instructions in stereotypical mock-Chinese English:
“To unlock the riddle of the East, is most necessary you read following honorable
special report on martial arts. So?” (72). Honorable, indeed. In a final demonstration of
the novelty of kung-fu, Carradine is pictured on the cover, in what looks to be a mock-up
photo, in a gi, the traditional uniform of Japanese karate.
97
The Tao of Kwai Chang Caine: Production and Beyond, documentary special
feature.
97
Bordwell, 93. Italics added.
98
Hunt, 67-68.
99
Richard Robinson, Kung Fu: The Peaceful Way (New York: Pyramid Books, 1974):
28, 55. Italics added.
100
David Bordwell, Planet Hong Kong: Popular Cinema and the Art of Entertainment
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2000): 84. Bordwell’s “rising thresholds” fail to
consider the long tradition of violence in American cinema, including cowboy, gangster,
and war films, extending back as far as Birth of a Nation.
101
Bordwell, 50.
102
Bordwell, 84.
103
Richard Meyers, Amy Harlib, and Bill and Karen Palmer, Martial Arts Movies: From
Bruce Lee to the Ninjas (Secaucus, NJ: Citadel, 1985): 11.
104
The Tao of Kwai Chang Caine: Production and Beyond, documentary special
feature.
105
Bordwell, 93. Italics added.
106
Peter Nepstad, “Jiang Hu—the ‘Martial World’” in Once Upon a Time in China (4849): 48.
107
Nepstad, 49.
108
Lau, “Introduction,” 3.
109
Bordwell, 87.
110
Cinema/TV Today, (July 28, 1973): 11). Quoted in Hunt, 7.
111
Sek Kei, “Development,” 30.
112
Huang Fei-Hong (1847-1924) was a near-legendary doctor and martial artist in the
final period of the Qing Dynasty and early years of the Republic. He was renowned as
a master of multiple kung-fu forms, including ‘Iron Fist’, ‘Five Forms Fist’, ‘Tiger
Vanquishing Fist’, and ‘Shadowless Kick’, as well as being a champion at ‘lion-dancing’
(he was known as ‘King of the Lions’), a ceremonial dance popular at street festivals
and other entertainments. Between 1949 and 1979, at least 85 films and 13 television
shows were released in Hong Kong. Yu laments that “very little information about
76
Huang’s actual deeds has survived,” but that did not prevent the stories from being
wildly popular (sort of like a Chinese version of Daniel Boone).
113
Yu Mo-Wan, “The Prodigious Cinema of Huang Fei-Hong: An Introduction,” in A
Study of the Hong Kong Martial Arts Film (Hong Kong: Urban Council, 1980): 82-83.
114
Yu Mo-Wan, “Prodigious Cinema,” 83.
115
Tony Rayns, “Wang Yu: The Agony and the Ecstasy,” in A Study of the Hong Kong
Martial Arts Film (Hong Kong: Urban Council, 1980): 99.
116
This festival centered on kung-fu movies. The following year the organizers focused
on the swordplay film, highlighting both the distinction made between kung-fu and wu
xia films, and the degree to which kung-fu had overtaken swordplay in importance in
Hong Kong cinema.
117
Ng Ho, “When the Legends Die—A Survey of the Tradition of the Southern Shaolin
Monastery,” in A Study of the Hong Kong Martial Arts Film (Hong Kong: Urban Council,
1980): 69.
118
Teo, 99; Bordwell, 183; Hunt, 4.
119
Teo, 100.
120
Hunt, 3, 49.
121
Sek Kei, “Development,” 36. Kar also worked on Western productions before
returning to Hong Kong; among other projects, he was assistant director on Man With
the Golden Gun.
122
Ng Ho, “When Legends Die,” 69.
123
Cheng Jihua, History of the Development of Chinese Cinema (1963), quoted in Lau
Shing-Hon, “Introduction,” 3.
124
Golden Harvest, to differentiate itself from Shaw Bros., set most of their films in the
early Republican period. The settings were more recent, but the conflicts remained very
similar—the villains simply switched from Manchus to Japanese.
125
Lee’s movies tangled the class struggle with issues of nationalism and racism; the
villains were either foreign, or Chinese crime lords who placed their own desires above
the well-being of the Chinese people.
126
Bordwell, 183.
127
Bordwell, 183.
128
Teo, 97-98.
129
Sek Kei, “Development,” 31-2.
130
Ibid, 34. Sek Kei continues, “Whether these techniques were accurately represented
or not is another question.” The accuracy of the representation is not as important here
as the impact of that representation.
131
Teo, 98.
132
Teo, 114. Teo expands on the link between the role of kung-fu hero and his
acceptance by the audience. Other kung-fu heroes like Wang Yu (The One-Armed
Swordsmen) were “conscious of [their] working-class status,” and went to great lengths
to train themselves, outside of normal avenues, to prove their worth and ability (110).
133
Ng Ho, “Kung Fu Comedies: Tradition, Structure, Character,” in A Study of the Hong
Kong Martial Arts Film (Hong Kong: Urban Council, 1980): 43.
134
Bordwell, 8. Unfortunately, there is a focus in kung-fu scholarship on visual appeal
at the expense of dialogue, accompanied, even in books written by English-speakers,
77
by a disdain for dubbed dialogue. The kung-fu heroes, however, are at their most
heroic when viewed in overly-dramatic dub sequences, their vaguely-British accents
delivering bombastic challenges, Buddhist philosophy, and Confucian ethical
pronouncements. Part of this is no doubt due to the fact that very little has been written
on the reception of kung-fu films in the US by non-Chinese audiences. But for our
study, subtitling detracts from the ability to watch the action, and for kids used to playing
the dozens and other forms of verbal braggadocio, the dub sequences provided an
unending stream of fodder (which would become even more important in the word of
MC’s and DJ’s). Also worth investigating is the translation of both dubbed dialogue and
subtitles, and different meanings the often-botched or grammatically incorrect results
hold for formally-educated critics and their audiences, youth already familiar with ultraflexible speech patterns and usage.
135
Sek Kei, “Development,” 33-4.
136
This educational approach allows viewers entry of a sort into the world of the films,
“partly facilitated by the pedagogic, initiatory narrative structures of many martial arts
films. These films don’t just tell stories about learning and transmission; they are,
themselves, a form of learning, an ongoing ‘education’ of the audience.” They allow “an
‘outsider’ to feel like an ‘insider’; that of the cult aficionado, the hardcore fan who knows
the difference between Mantis and Crane, Shaolin and wu dang…This esoteric cult
capital, often nostalgic for ‘old’ martial arts films with ‘authentic’ techniques, is
sometimes transformed into new (urban) mythologies such as The Wu Tang Clan’s
kung-fu-inspired hip hop or The Matrix’s cyber-mysticism.” (Hunt, 3-4) In the b-boy
context, there was not so much esoteric cult capital or nostalgia, re-emergent twenty
years later in the Clan or The Matrix as there was the immediate adoption and
adaptation of the films’ content into contemporary life.
137
Sek Kei, “Development,” 34.
138
Eric Pellerin, “Challenge of the B-Boy Master: The Impact of Kung-Fu on
Breakdancing,” http://kungfucinema.com/articles/2003-11-24-01.htm, November 24,
2003. Accessed October 12, 2005.
139
Hunt, 58.
140
Also released as Silver Fox Rivals, but not to be confused with 1982’s Rivals of the
Silver Fox, a much-inferior film banking on titular similarity to the original.
141
Baker, Rick and Toby Russell, The Essential Guide to Hong Kong Movies (London:
Eastern Heroes, 1994): 118. Italics added
142
Pellerin, “Challenge.”
143
Also released as Master Killer: Enter the 36th Chamber.
144
Roger Garcia, “The Autarkic World of Liu Chia-Liang,” in A Study of the Hong Kong
Martial Arts Film (Hong Kong: Urban Council, 1980): 123. Liu Chia-Liang is the pinyin
transliteration of Lau Kar-Leung’s Cantonese name.
145
Lau Kar-Fei, also popularly known as Gordon Liu, was the director’s adopted
brother. His character, San Te, or San De, meaning “Three Virtues,” a name he was
given after entering the monastery, was one of the historic heroes of Shaolin; his birth
name was Liu Yu Te. The film—as are many of the Shaolin films—is fairly historically
accurate; after completing his training as Shaolin, San Te left the monastery for
Guangzhou (Canton), capital of Guangdong province, in order to continue his anti-Qing
78
activities. He was killed by Qing soldiers, and monks from Wudang, a rival monastery
to Shaolin and an ally of the Manchus, after they attacked the Guangzhou monastery
searching for him.
146
Tony Rayns, “Resilience: The Cinema of Liu Jialiang,” in Li Cheuk-to, ed., A Study
of Hong Kong Cinema in the Seventies (Hong Kong: Urban Council, 1984), 52. Quoted
in Hunt, 62. Liu Jialiang is an alternate transliteration of Lau Kar-Leong.
147
Hunt, 63-4.
148
The RZA, with Chris Norris, The Wu-Tang Manual (New York: Riverside Freestyle,
2005): 59.
149
Tony Rayns makes a similar observation in “Bruce Lee: Narcissism and Nationalism,”
in A Study of the Hong Kong Martial Arts Film (Hong Kong: Urban Council, 1980).
Rayns concludes that Lee’s films reflect “both his strong personal drive to succeed and
his desire to externalize the feelings of personal and racial inferiority that afflicted him,”
and that in The Way of the Dragon in particular, “the revelation of his martial skills…is
identified with his creation of a role for himself in society.” (110) His performance
(martial arts) skills gave him a sense of meaning and importance.Lee’s overall approach
echoes the more explicit expression of the same idea in films like Disciples of Shaolin,
hammering home the point that the possession of something new, vital, and unique can
elevate one in society.
150
Lau Shing-Hon, “The Tragic-Romantic Trilogy of Chang Cheh,” in A Study of the
Hong Kong Martial Arts Film (Hong Kong: Urban Council, 1980): 91.
151
Parish, Jet Li: A Biography, 57.
152
Hunt, 102.
153
Ng Ho, “Kung Fu Comedies,” 42.
154
The Freshest Kids.
155
Sek Kei, “Development,” 36.
156
Chan Ting-Ching, “The ‘Knockabout’ Comic Kung-Fu Films of Samo Hung,” in A
Study of the Hong Kong Martial Arts Film (Hong Kong: Urban Council, 1980): 149.
Hung quoted in Chan, 149.
157
Lau Tai-Muk, “Conflict and Desire—Dialogues Between the Hong Kong Martial Arts
Genre and Social Issues in the Past 40 Years,” in The Making of Martial Arts Films—As
Told by Filmmakers and Stars (Hong Kong: Hong Kong Film Archive/Provisional Urban
Council, 1999): 33. Quoted in Hunt, 16. Other authors concur. Ng Ho, in his 1980
article “Kung Fu Comedies,” explains that kung-fu films of the 1960’s were rooted in
“’feudal’ virtues like benevolence, righteousness, and moral fibre.” The kung-fu
comedies of the late 70’s however, abandoned these values for the ideals of capitalism:
“their characters succeed through unscrupulousness, by biting the hand that feeds
them, by stopping at nothing.” This change in the films “faithfully reflects a change in
society: the struggle for survival.” (43)
158
Other Chan films exhibiting these qualities include Project A, the Police Story trilogy,
First Strike, and—of obvious importance to the question of kung-fu and New York City,
Rumble in the Bronx.
159
Chan Ting-Ching, “Knockabout,” 150.
160
Liu Shi, “Ng See-Yuen: An Interview,” Chan Ting-Ching, ed., in A Study of the Hong
Kong Martial Arts Film (Hong Kong: Urban Council, 1980): 145. Stephen Teo and Leon
79
Hunt have both written on the appeal of the kung-fu film to Chinese audiences
overseas. Teo points out that the ‘Chinese’ nationalism in Bruce Lee’s movies “is better
understood as an abstract kind of cultural nationalism,” (111) while Hunt finds, in the
Shaolin series, “a refinement of the kung-fu film’s dialogue with colonialism.” (48) Both
locate nationalism and colonialism at the center of kung-fu cinema’s connection with the
Chinese diasporic community. By proxy, their messages about being “cast out of
paradise by aliens” (Hunt, 48) extended to those non-Chinese viewers who were able to
identify with the diasporic mindset
161
Stephen Lau, ‘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: University of Minnesota Press, 2001): 126.
162
Ng Ho, “Kung Fu Comedies,” 43.
163
The dozens has a long tradition in the African-American community. AfricanAmerican author and professor Mona Lisa Saloy, in "Still Laughing to Keep from Crying:
Black Humor," written for the 2001 Louisiana Folklife Festival, traced the origins of the
dozens to “the slave trade of New Orleans where deformed slaves--generally slaves
punished with dismemberment for disobedience--were grouped in lots of a 'cheap
dozen' for sale to slave owners. For a Black to be sold as part of the 'dozens' was the
lowest blow possible.” Two competitors, usually male, trade insults, barbs, and jokes—
“Your momma’s so fat, she broke her arm and gravy poured out,” “You’re so stupid, it
takes you an hour to cook Minute Rice”—until one quits or is laughed out of the contest
by the audience. It requires a broad range of references, a razor wit, and lightningquick mental reflexes. Historically, similar verbal competitions were practiced in other
cultures. A flyting in sixteenth-century Scotland was an exchange of abusive poems by
poets, though the term refers generally to the exchange of insults in ancient Norse and
Germanic cultures. In an interesting parallel for comparison, American cowboys in the
late nineteenth century participated in cussing contests, the winners of which often were
awarded new saddles.
164
Chan Ting-Ching, “Knockabout,” 150.
165
Yang, Once Upon a Time in China, 177.
166
Weisser, Asian Cult Cinema, 216; Yang, 185-6.
167
Teo, 108.
168
Sally Banes, “To the Beat, Y’all: Breaking is Hard to Do,” Village Voice XXVI, n. 17,
22-28 April, 1981, 31-33; Newsweek, 2 July 1984; Sally Banes, “Breaking,” in That’s
the Joint! The Hip-Hop Studies Reader, eds. Murray Foreman and Mark Anthony Neal
(New York: Routledge, 2004): 13-15; When Wild Style was released, it was billed in
advertisements as “More vital than 100 Flashdances!”
169
Personal conversation with dance scholar and critic Sally Sommer, March 2004.
170
The same thing continues today in music videos, with such short snippets of dance
moves that viewers can not tell whether the stars of the video actually can dance, or
simply can get one move at a time right, and then those are strung together into a
semblance of respectable performance.
171
Bordwell, 87. Italics added.
172
“Underground” is the term used to refer to hip hop groups outside the radio/music
video mainstream, and denotes lack of a major-label affiliation. It is a badge of honor
80
for those who perform out of a love of the culture as opposed to aspirations of
commercial success, and is analogous to the “indie” or “independent” reference in rock
music. Both terms, however, are being increasingly co-opted by image-conscious
marketing departments, and are now commonly used as buzz words by the music
industry in an attempt to gain credibility or street appeal for their acts.; Jeru the Damaja,
The Sun Rises in the East, 1994; Special Ed, Legal, 1990; UMCs, Fruits of Nature,
1991; Fu-Schnickens, F.U. (Don’t Take It Personal), 1992.
173
Pronounced “Rizzuh,” and interpreted as “the Ruler Zig-Zag-Zig Allah,” a reference
to the philosophy of the Five Percent Nation, a mystical, radical offshoot of the Nation of
Islam that was prominent in the New York neighborhoods in which members of the Clan
grew up.
174
For instance, Tarantino’s Kill Bill, Volumes 1 and 2, The Matrix, Charlie’s Angels, the
Austin Powers series, Kung Fu Hustle, Chan’s US films, particularly Shanghai Noon and
Shanghai Knights, and recent films like Kung Fu Hustle and Ong Bak. Not to mention
the obvious movies: Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, House of Flying Daggers, and
Hero (all of which, though billed and commonly referred to as kung-fu films, are actually
classic examples of wu xia).
175
Teo, 109.
176
Produced in 1993, the film features a humorous scene where kung-fu hero Huang
Fei-Hong, himself the subject of many films, is revisioned into the first kung-fu movie
star. The film is set in Guangdong, and a friend of his arrives at Huang’s school with the
first video camera in the province. After much coercing, Huang is convinced to
demonstrate some forms in front of the camera. In a nod to fans who notice that many
kung-fu films seem to have the fight scenes sped up for the sake of visual
impressiveness, the novice cameraman undercranks the hand-powered camera, and
when they gather to watch the film later at the correct speed, everyone is astounded at
how blindingly fast Huang seems able to move.
177
Amy Abuko 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, n. 1 (February 2002): 32.
178
Hunt, 60.
179
For examples of traditional views of b-boying’s origination from these sources, see
“The History of Breakdancing” in Curtis Marlow, Breakdancing (Cresskill, NJ:
Starbook/Sharon Publications, 1979), and William Eric Perkins, ed., Droppin’ Science:
Critical Essays on Rap Music and Hip Hop Culture (Philadelphia: Temple University
Press, 1996), in particular Robert Farris Thompson’s “Hip Hop 101” and Katrina
Hazzard-Donald’s “Dance in Hip Hop Culture.”
180
Jeff Chang, Can’t Stop Won’t Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation (New York:
St. Martin’s Press, 2005): 116-117.
181
Katrina Hazzard-Donald, “Dance in Hip Hop Culture,” in Droppin’ Science: Critical
Essays on Rap Music and Hip Hop Culture (Philadelphia: Temple University Press,
1996): 218.
182
Quoted in Rayns, 103. Stephen Teo points out, in a selection from his PhD
dissertation-in-progress posted online at
http://www.sensesofcinema.com/contents/directors/02/hu.html, that Come Drink With
81
Me was Hu’s first “wuxia film (the swordplay and chivalry genre that predated the kungfu martial arts cinema) but it was already marked by the director's singular reworking of
wuxia conventions and themes that would establish his critical reputation and make him
a master of the genre… Come Drink With Me should really be viewed as a pioneering
work: a precursor of some of the themes and motifs that Hu would later develop in his
next two films, Dragon Inn (1967) and A Touch of Zen (1970-71), and whose influence
would be felt in the subsequent boom of wuxia films that followed its great success at
the box-office.” (Accessed September 14, 2005)
183
Pellerin, “Challenge.”
184
Hazzard-Donald, 221, 232.
185
Ongiri, 32. Other obvious links between kung-fu and African-American culture in the
early 1970s include Carl Douglass’ 1974 dance hit “Kung Fu Fighting,” and Rudy Ray
Moore’s series of Dolemite films. In perhaps the pinnacle of all blaxploitation movies,
Dolemite, a super-slick ghetto entrepreneur, demonstrates his own “pimp-fu” fighting
technique. He is aided in his battles by what the movie poster billed as an “all-girl army
of kung-fu killers,” employees of his strip club who have undergone martial arts training.
186
Sek Kei, “Development,” 27.
187
While the specific regional African origins of capoeira are not agreed upon, it is clear
that it was brought to Brazil by African slaves by the middle of the sixteenth century. A
martial art disguised as dance to prevent punishment on plantations, capoeira was
practiced to prepare the mind and body for potential combat situations. Illegal for much
of Brazil’s history, it was refined in Quilombos, communities of escaped slaves, and
eventually traveled to New York City with Brazilian émigrés in the 1970s. See Matthias
Röhrig Assunção’s recent Capoeira: A History of an Afro-Brazilian Martial Art (New
York: Routledge, 2005), Bira Almeida, Capoeira, a Brazilian Art Form: History,
Philosophy, and Practice (Berkeley: North Atlantic Books, 1986), Floyd Merrell,
Capoeira and Candomble: Conformity And Resistance In Brazil (Princeton: Marcus
Wiener Publishers, 2005). For a study of movement in capoeira, see Kenneth Dossar,
“Dancing Between Two Worlds : An Aesthetic Analysis of ‘Capoeira Angola’” (Ph.D.
diss., Temple University, 1994).
188
Ng Ho, “Kung Fu Comedies,” 45.
189
In Film Biweekly, nos. 7, 8, and 10 (April 12, April 26, and May 24, 1979)
190
Book jacket quote from review by The Source magazine; David Toop, Rap Attack 3:
From African Rap to Global Hip Hop, 3d ed. (London: Serpent’s Tail, 2000): 128. Toop,
in a three-paragraph discussion of the influence of kung-fu films, uses the photo to drive
home the story that DJ Flash, because of his skill level over other DJs of the day, was
given the title “Grandmaster” Flash by his friend Joe Kid to separate him from the rest.
(128) Sadly, those three paragraphs are the extent to which he considers kung-fu’s
influence in his 229-page expanded third edition, hailed by hip hop magazine The
Source as “the one classic standout” on the subject of hip hop history.
191
Mystery of Chess-Boxing, movie packaging.
192
Robert Farris Thompson, “Hip Hop 101,” in Droppin’ Science: Critical Essays on
Rap Music and Hip Hop Culture (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1996): 218.
193
A similar sequence occurs in 36th Chamber, although because of the monastic
setting of the film, lead character San Te spars against a host of fighting monks.
82
194
Garcia, “The Autarkic World of Liu Chia-Liang,” 125.
See Clip 1, the opening credits from Mystery of Chess Boxing, in which director
Joseph Kuo pays homage to Lau’s films by displaying stars Jack Long and Yi-Min Li
sparring before the movie begins, in a set that does not reappear anywhere in the film
(a tiled floor resembling a giant chess board).
196
See Clip 2, from Seven Grandmasters. The two combatants face off, mixing verbal
challenges and expressions of disdain with physical demonstrations of skill.
197
Bordwell, 52; Teo, 104.
198
The Freshest Kids, directed by Israel (New York: Brotherhood Films, 2002).
199
See clips 3 and 4, from Mystery of Chess Boxing. In the first, Ghostface Killer goes
to extra lengths to intimidate his opponent by making sure the opponent knows the
superlative style Ghostface will employ, the “Five Elements Style.” In the second,
Ghostface again performs an elaborate pre-combat sequence in search of a
psychological advantage.
200
“Signifying” is used here with the meaning that it holds in black discourse, particularly
the sense of making fun of a person or situation. Kinetically, it is the mocking of
another’s movements—an exaggerated, swishy parody of some tough-guy’s strut, for
instance—and “encompasses a whole complex of expressions and gesture.” Verbally,
signifying has a wide range of employment, from “the ability to talk with great innuendo,
to carp, cajole, needle, and lie” in some situations, to clever circumlocution in others.—
Roger D. Abrahams, Deep Down in the Jungle…: Negro Narrative Folklore from the
Streets of Philadelphia (Chicago: Aldine Publishing Company, 1970): 51-52. The most
thorough examination of the signifying tradition is Henry Louis Gates, Jr, The Signifying
Monkey : A Theory of Afro-American Literary Criticism (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1988).
201
Pellerin, “Challenge.”
202
The Freshest Kids, directed by Israel (New York: Brotherhood Films, 2002).
203
See Clip 5, a compilation of evasive moves used by Jack Long’s characters in both
films.
204
“Everybody Dance Now,” Margaret Selby, director (New York: WNET, 1992).
205
See Clip 6.
206
The Freshest Kids, directed by Israel (New York: Brotherhood Films, 2002). For a
comparison, see Clip 7, from 7 Grandmasters, a challenge to determine the superior
martial artist.
207
Bordwell, 183.
208
See Clip 8, from Seven Grandmasters. Here Jack Long demonstrates a classic
freeze/retreat sequence.
209
Robert Farris Thompson, “The Fresh and the Primordial: One Class from a Course
on Hip-Hop History,” (Lecture notes, January 1986): 10.
210
These simple interpretations miss the significance of sexuality in kung-fu films.
Stephen Teo discussed the two elements that Director Lau Kar-Leung feels a kung-fu
artist mustrepresent: 1. Family, whether it be an actual group of kinsmen, or a close-knit
community of fellow kung-fu fighters. 2. “Sexuality as a matter of balancing the yin and
the yang elements of kung-fu (so as to execute the art with greater efficacy.” He
explores the links between this yin-yang view of kung-fu and sexuality, “how masculinity
195
83
and femininity, strength and weakness, are all vital elements in the practice of kung-fu,
offering a more balanced approach to the martial arts… The sheer masculine presence
of kung-fu stars have led some Western critics to decipher homosexual motifs as a
integral part of the genre.” (104-5) This Euro-centric interpretation is flawed in
fundamental fashion, however, as both Asian films and hip hop sprang from cultures
with much different views of sexuality and gender than the West. Comedy, ridicule,
disdain, and homoeroticism/homophobia are common not only in kung-fu films, but in
practically all aspects of hip hop culture, especially b-boying and rapping. Rappers in
particular use those themes, combined with the tradition of the dozens, to belittle other
rappers and boast about their own skills, virility, and superiority.
211
Seven Grandmasters, Joseph Kuo, director (Hong Kong: Hong Hwa Motion Picture
Co., 1978).
212
Check Your Body at the Door, directed by Sally Sommer. Work in progress.
213
Occasionally the techniques were vertical. See Clip 8; Jack Long grasps his right
ankle with his left hand, and then leaps through the loop formed by arm and leg, an
obvious antecedent to the dance move later popularized by rap duo Kid ‘N Play.
214
Pellerin, “Challenge.”
215
Ibid.
216
See clips 10 and 11. The first is from Mystery of Chess Boxing. A long training
sequence between the Chess Master (Jack Long) and his pupil, Long executes the
move approximately one-third of the way through the clip. The second is a brief section
from 36 Deadly Styles, a longer version of clip 2, and shows Long performing a similar
flip to verticality as part of a more advanced sequence of movement.
217
Ibid.
218
Ongiri, 36.
219
Ibid., 35.
220
Sek Kei, “Development,” 37.
221
See clip 12, from Mystery of Chess Boxing.
222
Marshall Fishwick, The Hero, American Style (Washington, DC: Public Affairs Press,
1954): 247.
84
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Primary:
Film: Because many Hong Kong films are retitled for US release, or released at various
times under different names, I have listed them by original title, followed by the first US
release title if different from the original. Following production information, I have listed
any other alternate release titles as listed on the Internet Movie Database
(www.IMDB.com).
The Big Boss/Fists of Fury. Directed by Wei Lo. Hong Kong: Golden Harvest, 1971.
(Fists of Glory)
Blood of the Dragon. Directed by Kao Pao Shu. Hong Kong: Shaw Bros., 1973.
(Blood of the Ninja/Dangerous Chase/The Desperate Chase)
Boxer From Shantung. Directed by Chang Cheh. Hong Kong: Shaw Bros., 1971.
(Killer From Shantung/The Shantung Boxer)
Check Your Body at the Door. Directed by Sally Sommer. Documentary work-inprogress. Borrowed from director, March 2004.
Chinese Boxer. Directed by Wang Yu. Hong Kong: Shaw Bros., 1971. (Hammer of
God/Hammer of the Gods)
Disciples of Shaolin. Directed by Chang Cheh. Hong Kong: Shaw Bros., 1975.
(Invincible One/Royal Monks/The Hung Boxing Kid)
Drunken Master. Directed by Yuen Woo-Ping. Hong Kong: Seasonal Film Corp.,
1978. (Drunken Fist/Drunken Monkey in the Tiger’s Eyes/Eagle Claw, Snake
Fist, Cat’s Paw Part 2)
Eight Diagram Pole Fighter. Directed by Lau Kar-Leung. Hong Kong: Shaw Bros.,
1983. (Invincible Pole Fighter/Magnificent Pole Fighters)
Everybody Dance Now! Directed by Margaret Selby. New York: WNET, 1992.
85
Executioners From Shaolin. Directed by Lau Kar-Leung. Hong Kong: Shaw Bros.,
1977. (Executioners of Death/Shaolin Executioners)
Flashdance. Directed by Adrian Lyne. Hollywood, CA: Paramount, 1983.
The Freshest Kids. Directed by Israel. New York: Brotherhood Films, 2002.
Heroes Two. Directed by Chang Cheh. Hong Kong: Shaw Bros., 1973. (Bloody
Fists/Temple of the Dragon)
Jesse James. Directed by Henry King. Hollywood: 20th Century Fox, 1939.
King Boxer/Five Fingers of Death. Directed by Chang Ho Cheng. Hong Kong: Shaw
Bros., 1972. (Hand of Death/Invincible Boxer/Iron Palm)
Kung Fu—The Complete First Season. Warner Home Video, 2004.
The Mark of Zorro. Directed by Rouben Mamoulian. Hollywood: 20th Century Fox,
1940.
Men From the Monastery. Directed by Chang Cheh. Hong Kong: Shaw Bros., 1974.
(Disciples of Death/Dragon’s Teeth)
Mystery of Chess Boxing. Directed by Joseph Kuo. Hong Kong: Hong Hwa Motion
Picture Co., 1979. (Ninja Checkmate)
One-Armed Swordsman. Directed by Chang Cheh. Hong Kong: Shaw Bros., 1967.
Private Eyes. Directed by Michael Hui. Hong Kong: Golden Harvest, 1976.
Project A. Directed by Jackie Chan. Hong Kong: Golden Harvest, 1983. (Pirate
Patrol)
Return of the Chinese Boxer. Directed by Wang Yu. Hong Kong: Shaw Bros., 1975.
Secret Rivals/Silver Fox Rivals. Directed by Ng See-Yuen. Hong Kong: Seasonal Film
Corp., 1976.
Seven Grandmasters. Directed by Joseph Kuo. Hong Kong: Hong Hwa Motion Picture
Co., 1978.
Shaolin Martial Arts. Directed by Chang Cheh. Hong Kong: Shaw Bros., 1974.
(Martial Arts of Shaolin)
86
Shaolin Temple. Directed by Chang Cheh. Hong Kong: Shaw Bros., 1976. (Death
Chamber)
Style Wars. Directed by Tony Silver and Henry Chalfant. New York: PBS, 1983.
36th Chamber of Shaolin/Shaolin Master Killer. Directed by Lau Kar-Leung. Hong
Kong: Shaw Bros., 1978. (The Master Killer/The 36th Chamber/Disciples of
Master Killer)
36 Deadly Styles. Directed by Joseph Kuo. Hong Kong: Hong Hwa Motion Picture
Co., 1978.
Warriors Two. Directed by Sammo Hung. Hong Kong: Golden Harvest, 1978.
Wild Style. Directed by Charlie Ahearn. New York: Charlie Ahearn, 1982.
Zu: Warriors from the Magic Mountain. Directed by Tsui Hark. Hong Kong: Golden
Harvest, 1983. (Zu Time Warriors)
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BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH
Cutler Edwards was born in Ann Arbor, Michigan, in 1975, and has lived in
Florida since the ripe old age of 6. He earned his B.A. in History in 1997 from Florida
State University, with a double major in Classics, achieving the dream by taking fifteen.
He is a world traveler, a jack of all trades, and a real hoot at parties. He collects classic
vehicles, esoteric music, hardbound books, humorous anecdotes, and personal
accolades. He discovered hip hop in 1981, a new use for non-dairy creamer in 1991,
and the secret to his own happiness in 2001 (a large part of which is a healthy portion of
irreverence). Upon graduation, he will split time between a dirty shoebox in a major
northeastern city, and an ethereal castle in the cloud-wreathed peaks of North Carolina.
One day he aspires to complete a dissertation in verse form, to beat-box
accompaniment.
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