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Kung Fu Production for Global Consumption: The Depoliticization of Kung Fu in Stephen Chow's Kung Fu Hustle

2009; University of Arkansas Press; Volume: 43; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

2374-6629

Raechel Dumas,

Japanese History and Culture

Introduction: Martial Arts Gone Global! In recent decades the martial arts comedies of Hong Kong director and actor Stephen Chow have gained mass appeal in the competitive international film market. Chow's most recent film, Kung Fu Hustle, is of particular interest to scholars and fans of kung fu cinema, its release appearing both to have catered to and perpetuated a renewed obsession with martial arts cinema worldwide. That said, Kung Fu Hustle is dually significant in a rather contradictory respect. I refer here to a number of ways in which the film, in its attempt to appeal to a transnational audience, affirms distinctly Western notions of Chineseness that many earlier kung fu films set out to subvert. Like many films in the post-Lee era, Kung Fu Hustle detaches kung fu from many of its associations with main land politics in an attempt to appeal to a more progressive, cosmopolitan generation than the one before. While earlier films involved complex characters and attempted to explore and expose constructs ranging from gender to race to nation, however, the characters of Kung Fu Hustle are by and large one-dimensional and, though rooted in a filmic genre which has remained inextricably linked to Hong Kong identity, relies heavily on the Western imagination for its representations of both China's past and kung fu heroism. This discussion of Kung Fu Hustle thus explores Chow's construction of Chineseness through his representations of both Shanghai's past and the world of kung fu. In doing so, this paper seeks to elucidate both the ways in which Chow's necessary global integration effects his representations of kung fu heroism and Chineseness, as well how globalized media, in turn, informs both local and international conceptualizations of identity. Wuxia Pian: Kung Fu's Transition from Literature to Film The link between Chinese martial arts and popular entertainment is evident in stories from as far back as the 2nd century BC. These ancient martial arts tales have been revived time and again throughout China's long history and in the early twentieth century came to be manifest in the form of a new and wildly popular literary genre called wuxia pian. Traditionally, this genre is founded in the construction of a world of martial arts characterized by fantastic depictions of local spaces of the past, superhuman feats, and, often, dramatic and even dangerous romantic liaisons. Banned in main land China by the CCP, wuxia novels continued to thrive in Hong Kong and Thailand throughout the early twentieth century and in the 1960's were revived yet again as newspaper and magazine serials opened opportunities for wuxia authors to gain new readership. Though a comprehensive discussion of wuxia is beyond the scope of this article, the following is intended to provide the reader some understanding of both the mythological and stylistic elements of wuxia cinema. Twentieth century wuxia stories are largely centered around the concepts of the woman warrior and the knight-errant, of which Rong Cai writes: The woman warrior and her representational model, the knight-errant, are stock images in the martial arts (wuxia) world ... Wu refers to a person's physical prowess and mastery of martial arts. Xia stands for a chivalrous hero who defies legal and social conventions in his quest for justice, honor, and personal ambitions. The knight-errant, popularized over the centuries in a variety of art forms (most notably fiction and drama), became a glamorized cultural icon, a larger-than-life hero who could right wrongs when the law failed to protect people from injustice and the abuse of power. (444-45) Many wuxia stories were based around the myth of Wong Fei Hung, an early twentieth century martial artist, revolutionary, and practitioner of traditional medicine who within the wuxia tradition came to be glorified as a folk hero. As Wong Fei Hung's legend became increasingly central to the modern wuxia genre, Hong Kong cinema, already firmly established in the production of wuxia films thanks to the Singapore-based Shaw Brothers studio and the films of director King Hu, began also to reproduce depictions of the now mythologized figure as the embodiment of such traditional values as wisdom and virtue. …