After watching the film “My Name is Khan” which happens to be the first Bollywood film I have ever seen, I have some mixed emotions on the film. I found the film very enjoyable and uplifting on one hand, but also felt that the film dragged on and some of the parts were unescassary.

The enjoyable parts of the movie, for me at least, can be seen  through the main plot line involving Khan and Madura and their son Sameer. I loved this storyline and how Khan who has Asperger’s syndrome is able to make a happy life in American with which fulfilled his mothers wish. Furthermore I felt it very uplifting that a man with his disability faught so hard to get back that happy life after Madura sends him away following the death of her son Sameer from injuries received while being beaten because of his being seen as a Muslim, depicting the hysteria that took shape in America following 9/11. His ability to stay steadfast in his mission his wife Madura set him upon of telling the President of the United States that he was not a terrorist and neither was her son was completely uplifting and was enjoyable to watch. However on the downside I thought sometimes the film would go off on tangents such as his efforts in helping Mama Sherry (an African American woman he met early on in his odyssey to find the president) during a hurricane was slightly unecassary. Also I felt the whole setting of the villiage in which Mama Sherry lived was highly unrealistic because it set the African American inhabitants of the villiage in almost a different time and place from the modern day rural America. It had the feel as if they were stuck in the mid 19th century and was a little far fetched.

However I felt that the film was still very inspirational and entertaining, and I particularly liked the message in which Khan’s mother taught him when he was a child. She taught him that there are two people in the world, good people and bad people, and nothing else matters. This I feel is a good lesson for anyone viewing the film because, with so much racism and hate in the world it really puts things in perspective and simplifies things. Race, religion, or sexual orientation shouldn’t be what your feelings towards someone is based on but whether they are good or bad.

Though the film did drag on and there was some aspects of it that I didn’t enjoy, overall the films main plot line and some of the messages it was trying to convey made it pleasurable to watch.

While sitting in my armchair contemplating the approach I would take to this post and how I would articulate what I have learned from the reading I thought I would shift things up a bit and write not on just the chapter and how Bruce Lees Jeet Kune Do and Hip Hop ” share a comparible aestetic principle.(Kato 171)” Instead I want to discuss some of my own life experiences in which I stepped out of my comfort zone and where I learned to utilize what was useful and throw away the rest. This very concept that both Jeet Kune Do and Hip Hop use to great effect has been the key to the success I gained in my own pursuit of excelling in sports.

My passion for baseball started at the ripe old age of two when I watched my first major league baseball. I watched the game from the first pitch until the last out was recorded and even cried when the game came to an end. However as I progressed in the sport and received coaching from several different individuals who all offered different twists on how to swing a bat, or field a ground ball, or on how to approach an at bat, I realized I couldn’t possibly incorporate everything I was taught. I remember it becoming overwhelming and frustrating to be instructed on how to do something one way by one coach and another way by another coach. I expressed this one day to a coach by the name of Josh Fulton who I feel had the greatest impact on my education of the game, and his response was simple, ” Take what is useful and that works for you, and spit on the rest.” Astonishingly after reading this chapter I thought about Fulton’s words and realized the comparison advanced athletes have with both Kung Fu and Hip Hop in that they are able to perform the fundementals of their sport superbly but twist these fundementals and create their own style. This I feel comes from their ability to take in what they have learned and filter out the garbage and then are left with their own creative style of playing the game. This is completely evident in baseball when you look at a baseball players swing for example. You can see how fundamentally sound the swing may be, but no two swings are identicle. One may have a different way of holding his/her hands, or have a larger stride when starting their swing, or perhaps a completely unorthodox stance.

As I aged as a ballplayer I realized this idea of knowing the basics and absorbing information and sorting it out is the key to success and the way to overall advance in the sport. Since I have hung up my cleats and left the game I have realized this concept of taking in whats useful can be garnered to everyday life outside the playing field. I use it in how I approach my studies in school, to how I shape my workouts in the gym (I am still an avid weight lifter). All in all I feel that by being able to adapt to what is thrown at you in life and use what you have learned that is useful and discard the rest allows you to grow as a person and keeps you moving forward. Therefore I urge all who have taken the time to read this blog post full of excessive rambling, to look at your own lives and see if you can make a connection between Jeet Kune Do and Hip Hop and how its aestecics may be intwined in your own successes in life.

The theme that intrigued me the most throughout the first 108 pages of Ozeki’s book A Tale for the Time Beingis was both life and death. While reading I was trying to wrap my head around all the concepts such as time, place, communications with other, and realized they all correlate with both life and death.

Moments in time, interaction with others, and places of meaning all are incorporated into life regardless if they occur in the past, present, or future. It is like Nao’s Hello Kitty lunch box that Ruth comes upon, washed up on the shore of her British Columbia Island. Inside is a representation of time which can be seen as both life and death in the sense that memories can be suspended in time, and everyone has a point in which their “time is up” and they meet death. Within this unknown allotment of time you exist on earth, you have memories of both people and your communications with them and places you have been, which though they have become the past, now live on inside your mind. The physical state of being in that moment may be dead however inside your head it still can be alive if you think about it.

However that is what is so intriguing about the Hello Kitty Lunch Box. Though I might be quite wrong and am almost positive I am, I like to look at the box as a representation of life, within which Nao has put her diary which could represent the physical form of her mind for others to see. Which then allows for a piece of herself to live on within the pages of her diary. Also the watch that isn’t working at the beginning begins to work again after Oliver fixes it. It is almost symbolic of how Nao’s time on earth may have ended (which I am not sure because I haven’t finished the book yet) but with Ruth finding the Lunch box and its contents, Nao’s story and the piece of her life and memories within the Lunch box is revived just like the watch.

This all may be very hard for any of you reading this to understand but I wanted to give you all the thoughts I had on the theme of Life and Death running throughout the book, and the possible symbolism of the Lunch Box and its contents. I hope that you will respond with comments of your own thoughts about the subject of life and death and maybe some of the symbols you think Ruth Ozeki (the author) used in telling this story.

From watching the two documentaries about Gung Fu, entitled “Shaolin Ullyesus”, and “The Black Kung Fu Experience”, I was fascinated by the discipline and the dedication these practitioners of the art of Gung Fu presented. However in regards to popular culture, Gung Fu has become global. People are fascinated by the beautiful and powerful movements in this martial arts and from the film I can see how it has really changed  and impacted peoples lives forever.

In the film, “The Black Kung Fu Experience” many of the African practitioners of Kung Fu such as Ron Van Clief, Dennis Brown, and Donald Hamby, were influenced by popular culture in the form of Kung Fu films which caused them to take up martial arts and to learn Gung Fu. Also with the popularity from the movie industry we see that the Shaolin temple in China has become a tourist site, and the monks their have even sent representatives to tour the world to demonstrate the skills of these warrior monks. It is interesting to see the historic path of Gung Fu and how it has spread throughout the world. With it originally being spread through the persecution of the monks after the fall of the Ming dynasty or more recently through films and media, it is amazing to see the effect it has had on the world. It also was interesting to see how to the African Americans in the United States saw Gung Fu as a symbol of pride and hope for the black community. With such racism and prejiduce towards their community in our nations history, Bruce Lee’s films and other Kung Fu movies, depicted the underdog, rising up and defeating or atleast opposing their opponents who in most cases had greater strength and power, which I feel gave the African American youth this sense of being able to rise up against the prejudices they faced and to be proud of who they are. I also find it fascinating how through this form of martial arts, we see a link between East and west. Furthermore through the interest in Kung Fu films, and with Gung Fu schools being available for Americans to learn the art of Gung Fu, we see a gap being bridged between two cultures, which shows the effect popular culture can have on the world.

Going off of our last seminar on Friday I have attempted to make connections from the assigned reading in Kato. What I noticed was that when you look at the chapter a few key names constantly pop out from the reading and follow a vital theme within the chapter.

First off you must look at the time period. The 1960′s and 70′s was a point in time where we see a rise of counter culture, both in the form of the Hippie and psychadelics, and from the rise and populartity of Kung Fu films. What we see from this is Hollywood’s attempt to market of the popularity of counterculture, but at the same time to contain it. Warner Brothers can be seen as the biggest player in Hollywood for their strategy of taking the popularity of both the Hippie and psychedelic scene, and the Kung Fu phenomenom and trying to capitalize of its success but at the same time trap it and mold it into what they want it to be. We see this first through the great musician Jimi Hendrix and his performance at Woodstock with his band “Gypsy Suns and Rainbows”. Hendrix’s band as Kato describes, “attempts to forge a link between the counterculture, and the social context. And it also asserts not only continuation, but evolution the counterculture beyond the confinement of the 1960′s…(85)” Kato also describes the band on page 84 as ” a statement transcending the corporate-manufactured image epitomized by the image package of the ‘Jimi Hendrix Experience’” The band “Gypsy Suns and Rainbows” therefore represents the change and evolution of the counterculture and goes against the marketable image of the counterculture being sold by Warner Bros through their record label. We see how they contained this idea to preserve the marketable image of the counterculture and attempt to forever plant the Hippie and psychedelic culture in the 60′s through their film Woodstock. In the film they show Hendrix in one dimension while he plays the “Star Spangled Banner” and the band is seemingly unrepresented in the performance. They also do not show how the crowd embraced the band and the music being played. Furthermore when the song Purple Haze is played the image of the Hendrix and the bands performance disappears and is replaced by that of clean-up crews, representing the end of the concert and of the counterculture. Containment is the main theme that I have noticed from Hollywood and more specifically Warner Brothers throughout the assigned reading for Kato.

We see it also in the rise of popularity in the Kung Fu motion picture. As Kato writes on page 95, ” In Kung Fu, one could see the strategy of containment similar the one deployed in Woodstock.” This is reference to the 1970′s t.v. show Kung Fu starring David Carradine (a white man) playing the role of a blind Chinese monk. Though the show did consult highly prolific Asian figures in the Kung Fu genre such as Bruce Lee and David Chow it took what was offered by those who truly had knowledge of Kung Fu and the martial arts and Hollywoodized it, processed it, so that it became unrecognizable in the show therefore allowing, ” the hegemonic power of Hollywood,” to be retained.(95)”

From this I see how much power the media and those who control the media have, and how it can impact society. Also due to the reading I feel I myself will strive to delve deeper into the messages and symbolism that movies depict and perhaps will become more enlightened on the issues going on behind the veil projected by Hollywood.

BRUCE LEE REPRESENTED A CHARACTER AGAINST IMPERIALISM AND REPRESENTING CHINESE CITIZENS, INCITING OTHERS TO TAKE ACTION

We can see from the reading of Kato how Bruce Lee embodied and represented through his film roles a character who opposed imperialism and provided a symbol for others who were being oppressed to rise up and take action against their oppressors. In Lee’s case it was a fight against Japanese Imperialism which as a child he subjected to Japanese military occupation of Hong Kong.

In the film “Fist of Fury” starring Lee as Chen Zhen we see a single figure rise up against the powers oppressing him and taking a stand. The film links both the fantasy world of film as well as the actual history of Japanese imperialism and the atrocities that took place during this time in China. Lee’s use of expression in the film which strongly conveys national pride and sentiment, can be seen as symbol of rising against colonization.  We also see in Lee’s film “The Way of the Dragon” Lee playing a role where he is fighting a much greater and more powerful opponent. Lee’s character Tang Lung is able to overcome his opponent by being fluid and not trying to meet power with power and therefore “leaving the strategic plain intact” By using ones strength and turning it into his weekness Lee’s character is able to defeat his advosary.

From these films we see how Lee’s characters and expression give hope and pride to those who are being controlled and oppressed by greater forces. Also we see how trying to meet power with power, or hate with hate, is not the solution. However what I see as the most significant aspect of Lee’s characters are the symbolism exuded by these characters and the films overall. We see how the films correlate with actual history, and the films characters can be the representation of the state in which oppressed cultures and societies are subjected too due to colonization and imperialism. Characters such as Chen Zhen show to the world the importance of  taking pride in who you are and where you come from. Also from Lee’s character Tang Lung in “The Way of the Dragon” we see how those oppressed can overcome the power of colonization and bring down the system. Overall Lee’s films and the Kung Fu film movement symbolize revolution and the opposition of colonization.

Furthermore I noticed the effect of Lee’s films even more after watching the film entitled “The Black Kung Fu Experience” where it was discussed how the African American Kung Fu practitioners highlighted in the documentary saw Bruce Lee’s films as a symbol to have pride in their own African American culture and showing them that they can overcome the powers oppressing them due to segregation and racism taking place in the United States at the time.