Category Archives: paper

Kato: Final Jeet Kune Do-ing

My final musings on Kato are going to be in the form of Bruce Lee’s Jeet Kune Do; a form of kung fu that is free of any specific form. Lets see how creative I can get with this entry as I attempt to take advantage of that which the blogging format provides… (for this to work properly, view on my main page– Passion Bass-ics, then be sure to watch the videos & links).

“It’s never just a song.”

Strange Fruit: Billie Holliday (performance ’59?)

Click here to view the embedded video.

Strange Fruit: Beth Hart & J. Bonamassa

Click here to view the embedded video.

“Strange Fruit” is a song performed most famously by Billie Holiday, who first sang and recorded it in 1939. Written by the teacher Abel Meeropol as a poem, it exposed American racism, particularly the lynching of African Americans. Such lynchings had occurred chiefly in the South but also in other regions of the United States. Meeropol set it to music and with his wife and the singer Laura Duncan, performed it as a protest song in New York venues, including Madison Square Garden” (Wiki).

Authenticity was a subject that came up in our seminar group when discussing the final chapter of From Kung Fu to Hip Hop. The main comparison was between “white” and African-American hip hop artists. One assertion was that the white artist can’t possible understand the struggle– and therefore convey through music how it feels to be oppressed.

Razia Khan: Remember one thing, son. There are only two kinds of people in this world. Good people who do good deeds. And bad people who do bad. That’s the only difference in human beings. There’s no other difference. Understood? What did you understand? Tell me. Tell me
Rizwan Khan: Good people. Bad people. No other difference.

Consider this quote M. T. Kato provides from jazz great, John Coltrane;

“Well, I think music, being an expression of the human heart, or of the human being itself, does express just what is happening. I feel it expresses the whole thing– the whole of human experience at the particular time that it is being expressed” (p5).

Oppression is color blind. It is indifferent to a persons sexual identity. It is immune to the social construct of race. It is simply a tool of its master– whomever that human may be.

Everybody knows that the dice are loaded
Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed
Everybody knows that the war is over
Everybody knows the good guys lost
Everybody knows the fight was fixed
The poor stay poor, the rich get rich
That’s how it goes
Everybody knows

Everybody knows that the boat is leaking
Everybody knows that the captain lied
Everybody got this broken feeling
Like their father or their dog just died

Everybody knows, everybody knows
That’s how it goes
Everybody knows

And everybody knows that it’s now or never
Everybody knows that it’s me or you
And everybody knows that you live forever
Ah when you’ve done a line or two
Everybody knows the deal is rotten
Old black joe’s still pickin’ cotton
For your ribbons and bows
And everybody knows

And everybody knows that you’re in trouble
Everybody knows what you’ve been through
From the bloody cross on top of calvary
To the beach of malibu
Everybody knows it’s coming apart
Take one last look at this sacred heart
Before it blows
And everybody knows

Everybody knows, everybody knows
That’s how it goes
Everybody knows
Oh everybody knows, everybody knows
That’s how it goes
Everybody knows

 

Click here to view the embedded video.

Us and Them
And after all we’re only ordinary men
Me, and you
God only knows it’s not what we would choose to do
Forward he cried from the rear
and the front rank died
And the General sat, as the lines on the map
moved from side to side
Black and Blue
And who knows which is which and who is who
Up and Down
And in the end it’s only round and round and round
Haven’t you heard it’s a battle of words
the poster bearer cried
Listen son, said the man with the gun
There’s room for you inside
Down and Out
It can’t be helped but there’s a lot of it about
With, without
And who’ll deny that’s what the fightings all about
Get out of the way, it’s a busy day
And I’ve got things on my mind
For want of the price of tea and a slice
The old man died

Berlinermauer

“Too many of us let someone else have control of what we should have control of. Expression of Self” (p171)
~Vulcan

“Both Jeet Kune Do & hip hop culture, creativity arises from autonomy of self expression… Quality transcends institutional boundaries” (p177)”The degrees of … transformation can only be limited if one so chooses to limit it” (192)

“To express yourself in freedom, you must die to everything of yesterday. Fom “old you derive security. From the ‘new’ you gain the flow” Bruce Lee (p194)

 ”Creativity in art is the psychic unfolding of the personality, which is rooted in nothing. Its effect is a deepening of the personal dimension of the soul” ~Bruce Lee (p199)

 

 

Environment

The environment seems to influence a variety of characters in A Tale for the Time Being. One of the more obvious examples would be the character Oliver. Oliver is Ruth, the character,’s husband; he studies nature and is an environmental artist. He is also the reason that Ruth decided to move out to an island in Canada. With an environment like that of the Pacific Northwest, it can be easy to understand why Oliver is so entranced by his surroundings. Oliver’s knowledge of the ocean’s currents helped Ruth gain a possible lead on how the book arrived on the beach. He studied up on birds and made a connection between Nao’s diary and there own island. Oliver and Muriel both confirmed that there was a Jungle Crow in their yard, which comes from Japan. These were some interesting instances that may bring Ruth closer to finding out the history of the diary and Nao. There are other ways in which the environment plays a role in the book.

Nao writes in her diary about her trips to school with her dad. On their small morning journeys, they would always stop at a temple in the city. Nao writes about spending time at the temple and how much it meant to her. It brought her closer to Jiko in a sense, even though she first went before she knew about Jiko, and it gave her a refuge before going in to the school grounds. She continued to go the temple, even after her dad became a hikikomori and stopped leaving the house. Nao talks of the temple as having an air that seems to be ancient and pure, compared to the contaminated city air of the crowded Tokyo streets. She writes “I read about how the scientists in the Arctic, or the Antarctic, or somewhere really cold, can drill way down and take ice core samples of the ancient atmosphere that are hundreds of thousands or even millions of years old. And even though that’s cool, it makes me sad to think of those plugs of ice, melting and releasing their ancient bubbles like tiny sighs into our polluted twenty-first-century air.” (pg. 46) This can be seen as a crosscurrent between the theme of environment and the theme of time, since Nao is talking about essentially feeling like she is traveling back in time.

Pollution, environmental disasters such as tsunamis and earthquakes, natural forces, and even animals and their habitats play a role in the book by Ozeki. The differences between Ruth and Oliver’s island in Canada and Nao’s island of Japan allow for deeper investigation and connections as well. Japan is a densely populated island with vast amounts of technology and popular culture. The small island in Canada has a population of no more than fifty and is extremely isolated. Ruth feels like the forest is swallowing her house and all the locals know each other. These parallels make the transmission of culture between Nao and Ruth even more interesting. Ruth also longs for her former city, New York City, so she can relate to Nao on that level as well.

My Name is Khan

Something that will forever annoy me to no end is how race and who is dangerous go hand in hand in this country. In the movie, Khan is from India and has aspergers syndrome. After a fight with his wife, Mandira, he sets out on a journey to meet The President and tell him that his name is Khan and he is not a terrorist. To be expected, he’s met with obstacles. I mean, it is The President. You can’t just walk up to the guy and ask him about the weather. However, its his race and religion that continues to hold him back.

His journey to meet The President takes place after 9/11 and because of that, America is on high alert and  harassing anyone and everyone who looks like the newest edition of terrorist. This much I understand, I obviously don’t agree but on some level I think its human nature of be scared of something that looks like something else that hurt you. I’m not saying what they did was okay by any means nor do I think its okay to take assumptions to such a high level. But on the absolute, simplest most basic level of human existence, I get that it boils down to plain ignorance.

What I don’t understand is why we aren’t being paranoid of every white, teenage boy. Because that seems to fit the description of most of the people responsible for school shootings. Why aren’t we looking out for the average white male? Because I guarentee you that if you look up a list of the worst serial killer in the United States, more than 90% of them will be white males. Ted Bundy? Jeffery Dahmer? Gary Ridgway? Just to name a few. Despite this though, nobody seems to take them as much as a threat. I mean in the movie it was a group of mostly white males that killed Sameer and they almost got away with it! That’s a privilege of being white I guess, if one member of your race messes up all of you aren’t punished. Not like you would be if you were of color at least.

On a happier note, the minute Kahn and Mandira started singing We Shall Overcome I felt this weird sense of pride and joy and a tightness in my chest that I can’t even describe. I’ve always related that song to the Civil Rights Movement. I’ve always heard it being sang by black voices in church or in peaceful marches. It’s a song that holds so much meaning in my culture that it didn’t even cross my mind that other cultures would sing it too. It was selfish to think that on some level, it just belonged to my culture and black people. No, its a song for anyone with something to overcome. Black or Indian, it doesn’t matter. But when Khan was in the church in Georgia and they started singing it, I started smiling again. That was the version I knew. That was home to me.

Overall, I loved the movie. There were parts that were hard to watch because they were so relate-able. That’s always a sign of a good movie to me.

 

Mother Nature as anti-capitalist force // narratives of place (A Tale For The Time Being)

Ruth feels trapped by the natural world, “But here, on the sparsely populated island, human culture barely existed and then only as the thinnest veneer. Engulfed by the thorny roses and massing bamboo, she stared out the window and felt like she’d stepped into a malevolent fairy tale “(61). Oliver seems to heal and thrive living in the forest, but Ruth is estranged by the world around her, unable to read or feel connected to her environment. She obsessively scours the internet, looking for Nao in the names of the dead from the recent tsunami that devastated Japan. In From Kung Fu To Hip Hop, Kato describes Nature as the ultimate Other of capitalism,  “An awestricken reminder of this has been mercilessly destructive and erratic tendency of Mother Nature, caused by the overdevelopment that impaired the ecological equilibrium of the planet to a catastrophic degree” (Kato 111). Ruth feels caged by the entities around her, yet it is the circuit of the oceanic gyre that carries Nao’s diary to her. It is Nature itself that breaks down the boundaries between these two women.

To Nao the natural world is an escape from the cruelty of her classmates and her sense of isolation. Every morning before school she stops at a temple, “We were right in the middle of Tokyo, but when you got close to the temple, it was like stepping into a pocket of ancient humid air, which had somehow gotten preserved like a bubble in ice, with all the sounds and smells still trapped inside it” (46). There is a sense of calm, of ancientness and connection to ancestors. Nao describes the temple, especially the spot on the bench in front of the stunted maple tree as being “safe”.

Our reading from A Tale For the Time Being inspired me to think about my own connection to the Pacific Northwest:

I have come to crave the tang of salt in the air, the loamy scent of wet soil. Every summer we swim in the bioluminescence, the hoarse barking of bull seals echo menacingly as blue light blooms and swirls around us. The plankton cling to our damp bodies like otherworldly LEDs, looking strikingly similar to pinpricks of starlight. When I was 19, I swore I’d never seen anything more beautiful. I think about how in many ways I have grown up in this place. The woods behind my house a refuge. The sharp scent of cedar tugging at my clothes as wind howls through the canopy. I feel calm here, back pressed up against the roots of Grandma Maple, the oldest tree. Green helicopter seeds spiral in gentle arcs around my head, and in winter it is so quiet. The bare branches look like the sprawled legs of monstrous insects, hanging heavy with moss and lichen. Blackberry twines itself around the spokes of my ribcage, the dark succulent berries are a dizzying rise, a pull.

Ozeki p. 1-108; Theme of Death

In A Tale for the Time Being, the main themes consist of time, death, abandonment/running away, communication, place/environment, and identity. I am choosing to blog about the theme of death, because in my opinion the idea of death is what primarily carries Nao’s story along. One of the most important scenes that incorporate death and power is when Nao contemplates killing Daisuke. Both characters actions, thoughts, and beliefs are highly influenced by “just ending it all.”

First, let’s analyze Nao. She makes the conscious decision to wait for Daisuke in the alley, who is another “pathetic” kid that gets picked on at school. The sight of him makes Nao so mad she gains enough energy to easily take him down. “Honestly, it felt great. I felt great. Powerful. Exactly the way I’d hoped I would feel when I fantasized about getting revenge…. I pulled his head up and held the little kitchen knife to his throat.  The knife was sharp, and I could see the vein pulsing in his spindly neck. It would have been no effort at all to cut him. It would have meant nothing” (Ozeki, p. 102). Clearly, Nao is emotionally disturbed. She has been pushed to the point of fantasizing about revenge and not even caring about killing Daisuke. She feels disgusted by him because he is a constant reminder of her own hellish life; especially of why she is treated so horribly by her classmates. By killing Daisuke, she is essentially killing herself, or at least the part she hates. ”No matter what I chose to do, for this one moment I owned Daisuke and I owned his future. It was a strange feeling, creepy and a little too intimate, because if I killed him now we would be joined for life, forever, and so I released him” (Ozeki, p. 105).  Nao doesn’t kill Daisuke because she realizes killing him would connect their misery and also the reasons of why they’re “pathetic;” doing opposite of what she wants. In the end, his murder would merely make the part of herself she hates grow.

Interestingly enough, death even motivates Daisuke’s actions. With the knife to his throat, “Daisuke moaned. His eyes were closed, but his mouth was slack and his face was strangely relaxed. A small drop of saliva dribbled from the corner of his chapped lips. He looked like he was smiling” (Ozeki, p. 105). Daisuke’s smile and overall body relaxation serve as evidence of what’s going through his mind at that moment; he wants to die.

Once again, Nao’s thoughts are driven by death but also a disturbed sense of empathy when Daisuke tells her, “You should have just done it” (Ozeki, p. 105). “I watched him for a while. I felt sorry for him, because I knew what he meant, and I even thought about offering to do it again, but the moment was gone. Oh well” (Ozeki, p. 105). For a second, Nao feels empathy for Daisuke and wants to take his pain away without actually getting anything in return. In Nao’s disturbed mind, and at this exact moment, killing him would be just like giving him a gift. However, for whatever reason, just as fast as her empathy formed, it quickly drains away.

 

Week 7, Thursday. Kato, Chapter 5.

“The uniqueness of style and individuality was of utmost importance to a writer’s signature, for it was at one time, the only significant vehicle to represent one’s existence” (page 181).

This chapter concluded the relationship between hip hop and kung fu, but it also spoke of survival and existence. It tied the medium of hip hop (and all it included such as tagging) with mediums kung fu and Jeet Kune Do together by showing us how they are representations of a people forgotten. Later on page 181, Kato writes of how the use of Subway trains was meant to remind those who rode them (“corporate clones”) of the ghetto’s youth and existence.

The survival is also seen through the use of sampling, for both hip hop artists and Bruce Lee’s creation of Jeet Kune Do. By sampling all the best parts of their respective practice, they are recreating a part of their past to fit their present and deelop their future. I described this as an “immigrant’s art form”, because it mirrors the necessity for immigrants to accept parts of their new world without forgetting parts of their old world. For example, Bruce Lee is trained in kung fu and can never fully rid himself of this. For many, he is the face of kung fu. However, his use of sampling what works and creating a new art form allows him to the ability to neither deny nor be overwhelmed by kung fu. And for him, and others, it becomes the most fluid and workable representation of what they can do (which is later explained in more detail on page 192 in reference to the fight scene between Lee and Abdul-Jabbar).

And while both of these art forms have been comodified and put into the capatilist machine to be pumped out for mass consumption without any ingredient labels, they opportunities that have arose and the expression of “I exist!” have become even larger.

Week 7, Tuesday film. My Name is Khan.

My name is Khan touches on many triggering and emotional subjects which take the viewer on a tragic and inspirational roller coaster. (Or, in other words, I cried throughout the entire thing.) This movie brings awareness to the everyday ignorance and insensitivity of able-bodied privilege. For instance, yesterday when I was browsing Tumblr I came across this post, where the writer states that they are autistic and explains why autoplay music (music that starts upon opening the page) is startling and triggering. It’s something I have never considered before despite being an advocate of trigger warning labels, but immediately reblogged it and thought it an important accommodation. We see however, that those accommodations are not always seen as “necessary” which is apparent in the first scene where the TSA harass Khan (assuming the harassment is driven by racism) but we see his boarding pass includes some sort of pass which indicates he has autism.

It is the relationship between being a person of color and a person with Asperger’s that also makes this film both heartbreaking and beautiful. The amount of negative attention so often given to men of color (and especially when this movie is set, post 9/11 for Muslim men of color)  and the bombardment of dangerous stereotypes was put in the spotlight with this film. Last academic year I spent three quarters taking American Sign Language. Part of the class was not only to learn the language, but to learn about the very distinct culture. Because of the discrimination that deaf/ hard-of-hearing people have faced their groups have become protective and mostly exclusive from hearing people.  While watching this movie I thought of the cases where deaf individuals have been stereotyped by those who perceive their signing as gang signs. Google prompted many results when trying to find examples, but I’ve only chosen one to share. Lashonn White, a women of color from Tacoma, called police to report an assault and upon greeting (which she used sign) was then tased and held in jail without an interpreter.

Like we saw in the movie, the insensitive, ignorant, and clearly indecent treatment of people of color with disabilities is not just unjust, but it is incredibly dangerous for them and can be fatal. For an Indian American Muslim man to be viewed immediately as a dangerous criminal (“terrorist”) is to then completely ignore any other part of his existence. To see him  as only an individual capable of harm is to then perceive all of his actions or words as one that will bring harm. Like the instance of White in Tacoma, it did not matter that she called to report an assault, but instead that she is a Black women and therefore her signs were perceived as “aggressive”.

 

***It’s important to note that in ASL, your own space is important. When signing with another person I would never touch them or grab them. Even when indicating that something is really, really big, I would use my tension in my face or repetitive motions to indicate that and I would not extend my arms fully.

Ruth Ozeki: Greetings From Oliver

Hello.

My name is Oliver.

I am married to the person so many know and love– Ruth. As you are by now fully aware, she is an author. Of course she prefers the term novelist even though her writing lately has been anything but novel. That is until Ruth recently found a kids lunch box containing a bundle of letters, and a journal once belonging to a troubled Japanese teenage girl.

Anyway, we were talking about the box of treasures recently and the topic of “Jap Ranch” (a local beach) came up again. I am not allowed to say Jap Ranch because of my German heritage. Ruth is half Japanese, and her mother spent time in an internment camp during WWII.  As such, she feels a special kinship to that particular plot of land which once belonged to a Japanese family who themselves were interned in a camp for a time being.

To get her wound-up I tell her it is not fair– that I should be able to use the term as she does. This works like a charm. It never fails because she is reminded that she– rather, her people– were not the only ones who suffered unjust wrath during the war. She knows that my family lived in Stuttgart Germany when America and Great Britain firebombed our city. “Yes, yes– I know” she says rolling her eyes, “one barrage continued for three straight days in 1942, which was followed by several other Allied air assaults until the war in Europe ended in 1945.” We both agree that these exchanges of historical facts are useful reminders. As Ruth is fond of saying, “it is important not to let New Age correctness erase the history of the island.”

In the end, I believe the difference between the two perspectives boils down to place. For the time being we are at our home in British Columbia talking about Allied oppression of Japanese-Canadians. The discussion would likely be much different if we were having the discussion living in Germany. Her complaints would hold less tangible relevance in the land of my ancestors even though historically they are both significant. The place– where the conversation is happening– is the difference.

So there you have it. My postulations on being by-products of the mid-twentieth century.

I hope you enjoyed it~

Sincerely,

~Oliver

 

Connections between Kato p. 113-169 and Enter the Dragon Film

So something interesting that I learned is both Bruce Lee and Jimi Hendrix were born on November 27th. Isn’t that crazy? Two of some of the most famous/talented people were both born on the same day. What does that say? Is it really just a coincidence?

Ok, but anyways…now time to make some connections between Kato and Enter the Dragon film. The film was definitely fun and showed Bruce Lee’s, and the other main cast member’s kung fu talent…but there were a few negative things which stuck out to me, like racism and Orientalism.

Racism:

 (Roper to left, Williams to right)

1. Williams was the first main character to be killed off… and he was an African American male. Sound familiar? Especially in cheap horror and Sci- Fi movies? Pretty much the film writers and director were saying “yeah since the character is black we can afford to kill him off.” Messed up, I know.

Orientalism:

 (Han with ”his” zombielike women)

2.  The villainous character Han is clearly the stereotypical “villainous, sexual deviant, untrustworthy” Asian man. In the film, Han drugs women to keep them under his control, forces them to conduct in sex-work, and kills mainly the ”pretty white women” (at least in reference to the bodies shown). “Tania (Ahna Capri), the chief hostess of the island and Han’s right-hand woman, and the zombielike White women drugged and incarcerated in the opium factory impart the devilish influence of the Oriental villains “mind control” project” (Kato, p. 151). As a result, the character Han becomes the new “Yellow Peril.”

 (Tania and the zombielike women)

Besides the “mind control” over women, Han is also portrayed as an “untrustworthy Asian man” by running an illegal drug operation. “Han’s island as a milieu is thus demonized and monsterized through the aesthetic grid of “Orientalism,” which in turn seduces the audience into a militaristic perception, saturated with the desire for destructive consumption” (Kato, p. 151). Han is even “sneaky” enough to try and bribe/ force the white man character named Roper into working for him.

 (Roper being bribed/forced to work for Han in his (Han’s) underground lair)

3. “Although caged birds are found in the street of Hong Kong, their concentration was a pure invention of the director: “I couldn’t remember seeing anything like it and it was certainly exotic enough for Han’s perverted tastes” (Kato, p. 152). It’s a little ironic how the “Yellow Peril” character Han is supposed to be perverted….but clearly it’s the director who was the real ”pervert.”

 (Han with his “exotic” caged birds)

So now you should look for these things when you watch the film! It will make the experience even that much more interesting.

(1st picture taken from: http://farm7.staticflickr.com/6179/6171901734_17a9f4c353_z.jpg)

(2nd picture taken from: http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-e2HYO_p8m3U/Uc0RrKi-o3I/AAAAAAAAXXU/spG6pQyrUf8/s400/enter-the-dragon-1973-han.jpg)

(3rd picture taken from: http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_4IsrUoO6T68/TTiqHHOdbRI/AAAAAAAABKA/LOlwUwSBGn8/s640/Ahna-Capri-Enter-the-dragon.jpg)

(4th picture taken from: http://www.screeninsults.com/images/enter-the-dragon-roper.jpg)

(5th picture taken from: http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-q46VlF9Vci0/UayVjkjD WI/AAAAAAAAI_M/32QZgyEZGig/s1600/Enter+the+Dragon+-+Jim+Kelly+-+Kien+Shih.png)

Week 7, Tuesday: Kato’s Chpt 4 up against Enter the Dragon

Book-inspired scenes to watch for prior to film: page 199– cannot be neutral. “If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality.” – Desmond Tutu
Why I’m watching for it: To identify the difference between neutrality (doing nothing) and reservation (doing something in what would be seen as an irregular way/reaction).
Post film thoughts on the scene (The review):

Click here to view the embedded video.


While Roper (John Saxon) demonstrates neutrality (and it is true that with neutrality he isn’t actively doing anything bad, but the amount of good he is doing is equal to the amount of good Parsons is doing) , “Lee” demonstrates how to demonstrate defense in a way that involves no physical contact. I think this is important because physical contact, violence, and usual forms of defense are not always possible or safe; it allows for an alternative way to manipulate the dynamic of control.

Book-inspired scenes to watch for prior to film: page 123– yellow/white uniforms- Lee vs. Ohara (with special attention to the “spectator clapping” which shows us the reality of the cast dynamics) page 152- lack of acceptance for of yellow gi by Lee.
Why I’m watching for it: The context for “Lee’s” refusal with the uniform and to see the reactions during the fight. Also, to better understand Ohara as symbol (“personifies”) of imperialism (page 133).
Post film thoughts on the scene (The review): In this scene, there is a guard of Han’s that comes into “Lee’s” room and uses definitive words when referring to the (yellow) uniform: “you must attend the morning ritual in uniform.” With must, there is an “or else” attached to the end of it, even if it’s not spoken. With the yellow gi, “Lee” is refusing to be identified in a way that he has not chosen for himself. The book also mentions this theme among Lee’s real life actions in his resistance while making films and how he did not accept the traditional “Orientalist” themes. Likewise, the book explains how the reactions of those who were watching and clapping during the “Lee”/Ohara fight were real. Because of the tensions and discrimination that they [reactors] faced, the ways Lee had stood up for them, and especially the original scene with the glass bottle where Robert Wall actually cut Lee’s hand the fight scene between the two men symbolized more than just a dramatic fight scene in the movie.

Book-inspired scenes to watch for prior to film: page 126– Sin-Lu (Angela Mao Ying) and her “battle against patriarchy”
Why I’m watching for it: From what we’ve read, kung fu movies were not made with female roles as the main protagonist, so to have a woman in the film (which was made in the 1970s) fighting for herself and standing for so much– of course I was excited to see this scene.
Post film thoughts on the scene (The review): My initial reaction after seeing this was “seppuku? But the character is  Chinese…?”. I thought this was important because of the constant use of “Asian” as an all-inclusive culture and to have a Chinese character imitate an exclusive Japanese ritual did not seem to combat that idea. However, this is not a traditional seppuku and the important details on how it is done are missing. But the choice to have her stab herself in the belly instead of hypothetically slash her neck seems to be symbolic of dying honorably by her own hands. Sin-Lu’s screen time was completely spent on her fighting off the advances of the men and also running from them. While she was defending herself completely and competently, she came to a point where she was surrounded and immensely vulnerable. The only option for her that was still her own was to kill herself. So while I have mixed feelings about the details in the way she killed herself, I do think that the scene made a powerful statement.

Other notes!!
Page 146 mentions some writers who used “Oriental” themes in their stories, one of which being Arthur Conan Doyle of the Sherlock Holmes series. While I do not watch the show myself, I immediately thought of the modern television show Elementary where Lucy Liu plays Joan Watson.

My last note is very brief; merely pointing out the use of opium in Enter the Dragon and the way that stereotype continued into the 1970s.