Bruce Lee

This article argues that Bruce Lee revolutionized kung fu cinema not only by increasing its authenticity and combativity but also by revealing its inherent connection to wuyi (武意), or martial ideation. Martial ideation refers to a specific negotiation of action and stasis in martial arts performance which contains a powerful overflow of emotion in tranquility. Since the early 1970s, Bruce Lee's kung fu films have been labeled "chop-socky," offering only fleeting visual and visceral pleasures. Subsequently, several studies explored the cultural significance and political implications of Lee's films. However, not much attention has been paid to their aesthetic composition-in particular, how cinematic kung fu manifests Chinese aesthetics and philosophy on choreographic, cinematographic, and narrative levels. In Lee's films, the concept of martial ideation is embodied in the Daoist notion of wu (nothingness), a metaphysical void that is invisible, nameless, and formless. Through a close reading of Laozi's Daodejing (道德經), it is possible to discover two traits of nothingness-namely, reversal and return-which are characteristics of Lee's representation of martial ideation. The former refers to a paradigmatic shift from concreteness to emptiness, while the latter makes such a shift reversible and perennial via the motif of circularity. The discussion focuses on films in which Lee's creative influence is clearly discernible, such as Fist of Fury (1972), The Way of the Dragon (1972), and the surviving footage intended for The Game of Death featured in Bruce Lee: A Warrior's Journey (2000). These films shed light on the complicated relationship between the cinematic (action and stasis), the martial (Jeet Kune Do), the aesthetic (ideation), and the philosophical (Daoism). The goal is to stimulate a more balanced discussion of Lee's films both from the perspective of global action cinema and Chinese culture.

50 Years After Bruce Lee: Asian Martial Arts on Screen and Off
19-21 July 2023, University of Sheffield (UK)
In the half-century since Bruce Lee, what has been the story, status and significance of Asian martial arts? Bruce Lee was pivotal in making Asian martial arts into a global phenomenon, both on screen and off. His on-screen choreography set new standards and his polemical publications about martial arts training threw down a gauntlet, the reverberations of which are still being felt, in film, television, media, popular culture, and of course, martial arts practice around the world.

This conference – held on the 50th anniversary of his tragic death – seeks to interrogate the status of Asian martial arts, both on screen and off, in the wake of Bruce Lee. We invite abstracts that engage with the connections between Bruce Lee and Asian martial arts, whether in terms of cinematic styles, the development of martial arts discourses, or in the diverse connections of these realms with other areas of media, culture and society.

The conference seeks to bridge and connect the disciplinary fields of film studies, media studies and cultural studies, but the organisers are also open to proposals from related fields such as sociology, ethnography, anthropology, history and other forms of martial arts studies.

To submit a proposal for an individual paper (20 minutes) or a complete themed panel (of three thematically-connected papers), please send one Word Document to Dr Wayne Wong (k.wong@sheffield.ac.uk) containing the following information:

• Title
• Abstract (300 words max)
• Bio-note (150 words max)
• Keywords (5 max)
• Contact email address
• Link to personal or professional webpage (if available)

Deadline for Proposals: to be confirmed
Notification of decision: to be confirmed
Registration opens: to be confirmed

If you have any questions or wish to discuss potential ideas, please contact either/both Professor Paul Bowman (BowmanP@cardiff.ac.uk) and/or Dr. Wayne Wong (k.wong@sheffield.ac.uk).

Using the Chinese cosmological understanding of “shadow and soul” or ying hun (影魂), this chapter seeks to frame innovations in holographic technologies that facilitate the  stereoscopic re-projections of departed Hong Kong- and Taiwan-based transnational Chinese celebrities such as Bruce Lee, Wong Kar Kui and Teresa Teng. It argues that the rising popularity of such presentations in concerts and advertisements stems not just from the visual spectacle of these unprecedented animated holograms. Instead, audiences may be held by latent beliefs of the immanence of departed stars whose presences have been maintained by media technologies from the analogue phonogram of the past, to the digital performance capture and holographic representation of contemporary convergent media. Such developments provide new platforms for the ying hun of these personalities to be replayed and resurrected.

Masculinity, in Lacan’s sense, is an imagination. To specifically theorise Chinese masculinity, Kam Louie examined the elements of wen (cultural attainment) and wu (martial valour) rendered through historical or artistic images, and Song Geng and Derek Hird guide the discussions about Chinese manhood represented in everyday life. With a Marxist perspective, Lo Kwai Cheung illustrated the dissolvability of Chinese masculinity under international capitalism. With reference to Aristotle, it is supposed that Chinese masculinity, similar to ‘tragicity’ in nature, can be represented through imitating actions and hence be perceived. Based on Aristotle’s understanding, we can regard actions as ‘iterable’ media (like Derrida’s understanding of written texts) which engender performances according to the genealogy of quantitative mimesis.

Integrating theoretical discussions with a chronological approach, my full paper will go through following points in order to summarise the changes in Hong Kong crime films from the post-Bruce Lee era to the 2000s: (1) Hong Kong crime film inherited the martial side of masculinity from action films and became a popular genre since A Better Tomorrow was well received in the mid-1980s. (2) Many directors diversified the interpretation of crime in the late 1980s and the 1990s, but remained a focus on the strength, nimbleness and boldness of men. (3) After the decline of Hong Kong film industry for several years, Infernal Affairs’s success renewed the representation of manhood. (4) From the 2000s to now, male characters in crime films are preferably intelligent and wisely-romantic, like the fragile scholar in ancient China. (5) While globalisation seems to be eliminating the Chineseness of Chinese masculinity, I argue that geographical specificity and different speed of cultural development lead to the impossibility of synchronic masculine similarity. (6) Through a brief discussion concerning Hollywood’s adaptation of Hong Kong films, I argue that local masculinity is not transformable.

La mejor enseñanza que Bruce Lee le dejó a Jackie Chan. Cierta ocasión a Jackie Chan se le hizo la propuesta de ser el doble de Bruce Lee en la filmación de la película Operación Dragón, por lo que era necesario estar en la mejor forma posible, tener buena condición. Y para eso era obvio que debía entrenar lo suficiente como para estar a la altura de Bruce Lee. Él; Jackie Chan, nunca imaginó lo complicado que sería estar a su nivel. La historia narra que Bruce Lee tenía la costumbre de correr al menos tres millas diarias a un ritmo mucho más allá del que comúnmente lo haría un atleta normal, corriendo todo ese tramo en alrededor de veintiuno a veintidós minutos. No obstante; con su experiencia, Bruce Lee hacía un tiempo de dieciocho minutos en las tres millas cuando corría sólo. Un día común, Bruce Lee le dijo a Jackie Chan:-Esta vez vamos a correr cinco millas, al momento de llegar a las tres millas vamos a aumentar un poco la velocidad, sólo serán dos millas más, ya verás que lo vamos a lograr-. Entonces Jackie Chan le contestó:-Está bien, lo haremos-. Ya cuando estaban corriendo y en la tercer milla, iniciaron la siguiente; la cuarta milla. A los tres minutos de ir corriendo Jackie Chan ya se sentía muy cansado. Entonces le dijo a Bruce Lee:-Ya me cansé, siento como si el corazón se me fuera a salir del pecho, es lo más que puedo dar. Si sigo corriendo yo creo que me va a dar un infarto de miocardio y me voy a morir-. A lo que Bruce Lee le respondió:-Entonces muérete-. Jackie Chan se enojó mucho y ese enojo le sirvió para terminar las cinco millas corriendo. Al rato, Jackie Chan fue a donde estaba Bruce Lee para hablarle del por qué le había dicho que se muriera.-¿Por qué Bruce me dijiste que me muriera?-Lo que le respondió lo dejó impactado. Le contestó: manuelverdugo.com

This article argues that creativity in martial arts can be linked to moments of crisis. It does so on the basis of a comparative analysis of Bruce Lee’s martial artistry – specifically, his creation of jeet kune do – in relation to the earlier development of bartitsu and the more recent example of xilam. All three of these arts were founded by experienced practitioners who
took personal and social crises as stimulus for creativity. Lee’s own crises can be understood as: (i) Separation, in terms of his geographical distance from his wing chun kung fu school; (ii) Fitness, in terms of his dissatisfaction with his physical condition following a now (in)famous duel; and (iii) Injury, in terms of
the injury he suffered to his lower back in 1971, which resulted in chronic back pain for the remainder of his life but which also allowed for the technical, supplementary and philosophical basis for his personal way towards combative excellence and overall human development. On the basis of comparing these three cases, I propose a theory of martial creation, which I invite other martial arts studies scholars to test and explore further.

The importance of Galloway's Gaelic clans (or kindreds) on the medieval and later history if south-west Scotland has been neglected. The research presented here re-assesses their importance and significant influence on the history of the region.

In the decade after Bruce Lee's death in 1973, film-makers from around the world produced numerous films starring imitation Bruce Lees with names like Bruce Li, Bruce Le and Dragon Lee. This article suggests that any understanding of the discourse of Bruce Lee as a star is incomplete without consideration of the ways in which the ‘Bruceploitation’ industry appropriated the star image of Bruce Lee and repackaged it for a transnational audience in the waning years of ‘kung fu fever’. By analysing the films’ narratives and marketing, the article argues that these films are not mere ‘clones’ of the ‘real’ thing, but rather imitations with a self-conscious difference. These films present ‘conjectural Bruce Lees’ that expand the familiar Bruce Lee image in order to maintain fan interest. As a result, ‘Bruce Lee’ as a discourse became increasingly flexible and sticky, hybridizing across cultures and genres. This view of ‘Bruce Lee’ beyond Bruce Lee asks that scholars approach stars not simply as discrete actors, but also as disembodied star-functions that transform across time and space.

This article situates Bruce Lee at the heart of the emergence of 'martial arts'. It argues that the notion 'martial arts', as we now know it, is a discursive entity that emerged in the wake of media texts, and that the influence of Bruce Lee films of the early 1970s was both seminal and structuring of 'martial arts', in ways that continue to be felt. Using the media theory proposition that a limited range of 'key visuals' structure the aesthetic terrain of the discursive entity 'martial arts', the article assesses the place, role and status of images of Bruce Lee as they work intertextually across a wide range of media texts. In so doing, the article demonstrates the enduring media legacy of Bruce Lee-one that has always overflowed the media realm and influenced the lived, embodied lifestyles of innumerable people the world over, who have seen Bruce Lee and other martial arts texts and gone on to study Chinese and Asian martial arts because of them.

Talk given on 1st February 2016 at the China Institute, School of
Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London.

This talk poses the question of Bruce Lee’s national identity. Of course, the facts of this matter are widely known: there is no mystery or controversy about the US passport that Bruce Lee held from the age of eighteen. However, one question that constantly recurs is that of his ethno-national ‘cultural identity’: who owns Bruce Lee? China? Bruce Lee is after all ethnically Chinese and his first language was Cantonese. But he was born in San Francisco, raised in the British Crown Colony of Hong Kong, and became a US citizen at eighteen… This multiple, moving, migrant status is not unique to Bruce Lee, of course. But in all of the discourses about him there remain strong drives to ‘place’ him or ‘claim’ him – whether for a place (America, Hong Kong, China, or the world), or a people (Americans, ‘Chinese everywhere’, the colonised subaltern, this or that ethnic minority), or a ‘style’ (Wing Chun Kung Fu, ‘American Freestyle Karate’, even MMA), or an ideology (‘Western’, ‘Eastern’, ‘New Age’, ‘Postmodern’). This paper seeks to interrogate such appropriative impulses, and to examine them in terms offered by several approaches: Derridean deconstruction, Rey Chow’s (Benjaminian) take on ‘culture’, and a Rancièrean notion of ‘policing’. It does so in order to propose certain ways to think critically about acts of cultural ‘placing’.

This is an epub file, use other apps to read it! This book is posted so you could be more next to Bruce personal thoughts and life, and also to clarify what really happened between Ip Man and him, which did not happen like the movies but it happened by other eans, the true fact is that Bruce arrived back to China when his master died of cancer and he really saw the coffin and etc. The book shows that that the letters of his master were wrote, but not sent...

This is a first draft. The paper addresses the question of whether the emergent field of martial arts studies might be regarded as trivial. In doing so, it explores possible rationales and raisons d'être of the field in terms of a reflection on the legitimation of academic subjects, especially those closest to martial arts studies and from which martial arts studies can be seen to have emerged.

The late Bruce Lee was an example of a visionary martial arts founder and pioneer. His art and philosophy of Jeet Kune Do was one of several martial arts developed in the twentieth century. The Victorian-Edwardian system of Bartitsu emerged at the dawn of the century, and the Mexican martial art of Xilam was created in the 1990s. All three of these arts were founded by martial artists that took personal and social issues as stimulant for creativity. Lee’s own geographical distance from his Wing Chun Kung Fu school, his dissatisfaction with his physical condition following a now (in)famous duel and his later, almost-permanent back injury, allowed for the technical, supplementary and philosophical basis for his personal way towards combative excellence and overall human development. These moments of crises, continuity, creativity and change are the major themes in the tradition of pragmatism, which examines the links between objective and subjective realities. In this paper, I will offer a comparative analysis of Bruce Lee’s martial artistry in light of similar developments in Bartitsu and Xilam: examining how a human in movement (both physically and socially) can lead to the vision and dissemination of an art. 

Keywords: Pragmatism; art; science; the body; movement culture.

The Joe Rogan Experience is one of the most popular podcasts on the web, reaching 10s of millions of viewers per month. Rogan discusses a wide variety of topics with a variety of guests, some of them friends who appear regularly: martial arts, comedy, nutrition and health, conspiracy theories, psychedelic drugs, and a variety of science topics. In this paper I discuss several specific podcasts, with: Steven Pinker (his latest book, Enlightenment Now), Michael Pollan (psychedelic drugs), Neil deGrasse Tyson (moon landing), Howard Bloom (music, altered states, space program), Joey Diaz (Bruce Lee and martial arts), and Elon Musk (AI). I also include an annotated transcription of the Joey Diaz conversation.

Ha sido un personaje mítico que años después de su muerte sigue muy presente entre nosotros. Le bastaron pocos años (murió a los 33) para popularizar las artes marciales en Occidente. Bruce Lee es uno de los íconos más admirados en Asia y uno de los actores más influyentes de la segunda mitad del siglo, aunque su carrera fue breve. Pese a que su calidad artística fue muy discutible para algunos críticos, Bruce Lee tuvo el mérito de impulsar en Occidente las artes marciales y de ofrecer un ejemplo de tenacidad para superar las adversidades.

This article seeks to illuminate and overcome certain limitations in the influential 'post-Marxist' discourse theory of Ernesto Laclau. It does so by way of examining two apparently simple but perhaps unexpectedly complex case studies. So, after introducing Laclau and Mouffe's influential theory of discourse, the article first exposes aspects of this theory to a reflection on some famous ideas about martial arts as disseminated by the kung fu film star Bruce Lee in the 1970s. It then justifies this case study by situating Bruce Lee as a key dimension of some wider macro-cultural discourses. After doing so, the article turns to a more recent but connected example: the 2002 Hollywood film, The Bourne Identity, which turns out to be an unexpectedly 'cross-cultural' filmic text. The point of this exercise is to illustrate that although fields such as film studies and cultural studies have traditionally imported many of their notions and understandings of 'politics' and 'the political' from texts such as the political theory of Laclau and Mouffe (1985), there are in fact limits to what such paradigms and approaches are able to 'see'. Consequently, the article seeks to clarify how and why fields outside of political theory ought not to simply rely on the terms and concepts developed within and by political theory, and reciprocally to indicate some of what political theorists might learn from film and cultural studies approaches. Ultimately, the article aims to reiterate the significance of Laclau and Mouffe's key critical contributions to wider understandings of politics and the political, whilst at the same time revealing the limitations of this paradigm of analysis. The hope underpinning the orientation of the article is that cross-disciplinary dialogue across such fields as political studies, film studies and cultural studies might enrich

This paper reads the emergence of ‘Oriental style’ in Hollywood (Park 2010) as an exemplary case of what Rey Chow calls ‘cultural translation (Chow 1995). The paper explores the intimate yet paradoxical relationship between ‘Oriental’ martial arts and the drive for ‘authenticity’ in both film choreography and martial arts practices; plotting the trajectories of key martial arts crossovers since Bruce Lee. It argues that, post-Bruce Lee, Western film fight choreography first moved into and then moved away from overtly Chinese, Japanese, Hong Kong or indeed obviously ‘Oriental style’; a move that many have regarded as a deracination or westernisation of fight choreography. However, a closer look reveals that this apparent deracination is actually the unacknowledged rise of Filipino martial arts within Hollywood. The significance of making this point, and the point of making this kind argument overall boils down to the insight it can give us into how ‘cultures’ and texts are constructed, and also into our own reading practices and the roles they play, sometimes in perpetuating certain problematic ethno-nationalist discourses.

This short essay was  commissioned by the City of Darebin as part of the Writing This Place project curated by Elizabeth Welch, which paired ten writers with ten locations around Darebin, in Melbourne’s inner north. See: http://www.darebinarts.com.au/programs/writing-this-place/