This book clearly and compellingly describes the globalization of kung fu cinema vis-à-vis the primary social discourses of the period. The introduction sets the stage for ensuing analysis, and chapter titles tantalizingly reference the global journey of Hong Kong's martial arts cinema to Hollywood within the discourse of race, gender, and transnationalism. A prefatory screenshot of David Carradine in the television show Kung Fu embodies the spectrum of conundrums addressed, capturing the “journey to the West” (a Ming dynasty novel reference) and suggesting the role that Bruce Lee had in bringing Chinese kung fu to the world. A muscular screenshot of Lee from The Way of the Dragon (13) indicates the situational complexity of kung fu globalization, which eventually created the conditions for success of later Chinese stars and “redefined and scrambled the field of representation” of East Asian stereotypes vis-à-vis the West (21). Books such as Edward Said's Orientalism...
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Book Review|
May 01 2024
Fighting without Fighting: Kung Fu Cinema's Journey to the West
Fighting without Fighting: Kung Fu Cinema's Journey to the West
. By Luke White. London
: Reaktion Books
, 2022
. 294
pp. ISBN: 9781789145335.Journal of Asian Studies (2024) 83 (2): 526–528.
Citation
Paul B. Foster; Fighting without Fighting: Kung Fu Cinema's Journey to the West. Journal of Asian Studies 1 May 2024; 83 (2): 526–528. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/00219118-11015851
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