“He’s a living legend, if you’ve never seen action. Who does all his own stunts.” Jackie Chan, known for his reckless stunts, comedy, and bizarre English, has introduced Hollywood to a newly perception and invented martial art that appeals to all sorts of audiences. He incorporates his knowledge from his younger days in the Peking Opera and China Drama Academy under the guidance of Master Yu Jim- Yuen, a famous Peking opera wu-shen performer, who is considered to be the grandfather of Hong Kong martial arts movies. Not only did he learn a lot from the opera and academy that helped him enter to the U.S. movie market, but also his inspiration from and working with Bruce Lee, who helped bring Hong Kong Cinema to the United States. However, there is a significant difference in fighting styles between the two famous actors. All films Bruce Lee starred promoted violence and unrealistic fighting sequences, while Jackie Chan fights incorporates realistic yet comedic and artistic characteristics in his movies. Overall, what makes Chan stand out than the rest of the martial artists is his sense of humor in all of the fighting sequences, which is sometimes needed when the audience is watching non-stop action. In all of the movies featuring Jackie Chan, he has changed how Kung fu Cinema was originally viewed, due to Bruce Lee’s entrance in Hollywood to redefine Asian masculinity, by his unique theatrical martial arts, which displays creative and realistic fighting sequences; this style of fighting is best showcase in the Bourne sequels.
Jackie Chan and a few highly trained actors and martial artists entered American cinema during the 80s and all of them had one thing in common, they were all trained in the tradition of Peking opera. Pekin...
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...t of Jeet Kung Tao and Kung Fu (Hong Kong: Bruce Lee Jeet Kung Tao Club, 1976)
Chiao, Hsiung Ping. "Bruce Lee: His influence on the evolution of the kung fu genre." Journal of Popular Film and Television 9, no. 1 (1981): 30-42.
Kaminsky, Stuart. "Kung Fu as Ghetto Myth." Movies as Artifacts: Cultural Critiques of Popular Film. (1982): 137-45.
Anderson, Aaron. "Violent dances in martial arts films." Jump Cut: A Review of Contemporary Media 44 (2001).
Shu, Yuan. "Regarding the Kung Fu Film in an American Context: From Bruce Lee to Jackie Chan." (2003): 50-59.
Shu, Yuan. "Regarding the Kung Fu Film in an American Context: From Bruce Lee to Jackie Chan." (2003): 50-59.
Chan, interview by Clemetson, "Return of the Dragon," March 1996:46-47.
Strauss, Neil. "Faster than a Speeding Bullet, but Also Humanly Fallible." New York Times, January 30, 1995
Mark Salzman was perfecting his calligraphy skills and as weeks had passed he began to make progress. He was getting tired of the models and wanted to try something new. When he told Hai Bin,(his teacher), he frowned and said,”Some people spend their entire lives researching a single model. You should be willing to spend a year on this one.” This is an example of the dedication and perseverance these men have towards their chosen artform or skill. Another example of this theme, was Mark’s Wushu teacher, Pan, who punched a fifty pound plate of steel up to ten thousand times a day. Mark’s relentless practicing of the many forms of Wushu was influenced by Pan.
As the cessation of the century approached, Rhee had accomplished more than he had ever hoped, garnering awards and apperceptions virtually too numerous to count. He had been denominated one of President George Bush’s Daily Points of Light. His ebony belt students included not only Members of Congress, but eminent figures like Tony Robbins, Jack Valenti, and Jack Anderson. He had appeared on the cover of Parade magazine with Cheryl Tiegs. And he had been designated by Ebony Belt magazine as one of the top two living martial artists of the 20th Century.
McDougall, Bonnie S. "Bei Dao's Poetry: Revelation & Communication." Modern Chinese Literature 1.2 (1985): 225-252.
In one of the more commonly portrayed stereotypes in film, Asians are often portrayed as great martial artists. Martial arts seem to come less as a skill and more a natural ability to someone who is Asian. Somehow, it’s right in our blood. Actors who have contributed to t...
Tsai, Shan-Shan Henry. The Chinese Experience in America. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1986.
In his 1937 film Street Angel, Yuan explores the inequities facing Shanghai’s urban proletariat, an often-overlooked dimension of Chinese society. The popular imagination more readily envisions the agrarian systems that governed China before 1919 and after 1949, but capitalism thrived in Shanghai during that thirty-year buffer between feudalism and Communism. This flirtation with the free market engendered an urban working class, which faced tribulations and injustices that supplied Shanghai’s leftist filmmakers with ample subject matter. Restrained by Kuomintang censorship from directly attacking Chinese capitalism, Yuan employs melodrama to expose Street Angel’s bourgeois audience to the plight of the urban poor.
Keith, Zak. “Anti-Chinese USA: Racism and Discrimination from the Onset” Zac Keith. 2009. Web. 5 May 2014.
Ever since the establishment of cinema in the early 1900s, Hollywood has continuously recreated elements of history to reenact for its future generations. In order to clearly broadcast a specific theme or message to relay to viewers around the world, Hollywood executives tend to embellish real life events, in order to provide a “fairytale” aspect to a seemingly not so “happily- ever-after” story from history. As part of this “fairytale” aspect, Hollywood tends to delegitimize as well as provide a more disrespectful and more comical version of societies and cultures in the specific time frame that the film is being set. Through the art of story telling, the movies Mulan and Kung Fu Panda, depict the two sides of Hollywood, the falsifying and mockery making of Chinese people, their society, beliefs and true events of history and that of an accurate portrayal.
In the film Gung Ho filmed in the year 1986, the story is told of the plight of the people working in the region known as the Rust Belt. The group that is the focal point of this story is the relation between Asian men in an American town and the differences they share are played out in this movie. The stereotypes enlisted in this movie are both that of a villainous nature and a comedic relief with some of the characters. Throughout the film it is how the clever, white working class people of this hard working town have to overcome the maniacal working environment these Asian men have. Common stereotypes of the Asian man lay throughout the entire course of the movie, stereotypes that have been portrayed by the film industry of Asian men since its inception.
Philosophy is one of the most important aspects of any traditional martial art. The philosophies of many martial arts such as Taekwondo, Kung Fu, and Karate are based off of Confucianism and principles from Confucius’s The Analects. Although traditional martial arts contain philosophical teachings, modern martial arts have lost their meaning, or “art.” The popularity of the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) and Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) has contributed greatly to the loss of meaning in modern martial arts. By examining the philosophy’s importance in The Analects, one can see how martial arts is more than a physical set of skills.
Rickery, Carrie. "History And 'The Last Emperor' Parts Of The Film Are Accurate, But Much Is Missing, Says A China Scholar." Http://articles.philly.com. Http://articles.philly.com, 30 Dec. 1987. Web. 04 Apr. 2014.
Jacobs, Lewis. “Refinements in Technique.” The Rise of the American Film. New York: Teachers College Press, 1974. 433-452. Print.
The supposed author of the Tao Te Ching, Lao Tzu, is said to be the father of Taoism. It is estimated that Lao Tzu, spelled many other ways including Lao-tsu, Lao Tse, and Lao Tzi, was born under the name of Li Erh in Honan, China, around 604 B.C.E. Myth says that Lao Tzu was born fully developed with a long, white beard and hair the color of snow. He was somewhat of a recluse and withdrew from society to avoid governmental law and rule. He retreated to the Western frontier after the fall of the Zhou dynasty to continue his personal study of metaphysics and philosophy (Taoism 2). The collaborations of his studies and observations are said to be the basis of the Tao Te Ching, although some scholars argue that Lao Tzu’s existence cannot be proved and that the scholar Chuang-tzu played at least a partial role in the authorship. However the Tao Te Ching came to be, it is prized for being the foundation of Taoist belief and should hold merit as a universal guide, not as an author’s accomplishment (De Bary, Chan, and Watson 49).
... "Indigenous or Foreign?: A Look at the Origins of the Monkey Hero Sun Wukong,"Sino-Platonic Papers, 81 (September 1998)
Cheng, Nien. Life and Death in Shanghai. New York, New York: The Penguin Group, 1986.