Category Archives: paper

Pop-osition

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Pop-osition 4) The Kung Fu cultural revolution ignited transnational resistance against Japanese cultural imperialism.

Kung Fu films were seen as a form of resistance against the increase in popularity in Samurai Films. What the Kung Fu experience was able to provide is perhaps a level of confidence in Chinese people that they didn’t have during World War II, as the country was devastated by the Japanese occupation. When Samurai films increased in popularity worldwide throughout the 1950s and 60s, the Kung Fu revolution was a great foil because it’s something that I feel embodies the notion of “underdog”, something that a lot of Asian communities could relate to.

Connecting Kato

Who: David Carradine

What: Kungfu

When: 1972- 1975

Where: Hollywood

With the success of Kungfu in American pop culture, it seems like the next step for America to take after kungfu movies is to make a T.V. show about it and showcase it the people of the United States. When I was first reading about it, I really liked the idea of where the show, Kungfu was going to take. Then I get to the part where they go into details about the cast of the show and that’s where I felt very disappointed. As per usual though, I don’t really like to focus too much on the negative side of things so I’ll give it this much, I am glad that they utilized Bruce Lee as a plot consultation, at least they were trying to keep things in the background as close to authentic as they could get it. What I don’t understand the decisions in choosing someone whose white, with no interest in kungfu or martial arts in general to be the face of this show. It reminds me in of the section in Dave with the discussion of shows based in Hawai’i, why does Hollywood always want to put a white face on a completely different culture from their protagonist? And if it’s not a white face they want to portray, then instead they try to caricaturize a person’s culture or just having no mention of someones background at all.

“Nonetheless, such investment was not to introduce “realism” but rather to refine the “prop” with sophistication so that the paradigm of the kung fu genre can be processed” (95)

I understand that television is a way to escape from reality but there have been plenty of television shows in the past that try and talk about real historical events that have happened in the past and even in this day and age we have a whole genre called “reality T.V.” but even then, that genre is so misleading because it’s not reality in a lot of cases. Why does Hollywood claim that they want to show the realistic aspects of life but constantly show lies?

 

Kato p. 71-112; Similarities between Jimi Hendrix and Bruce Lee

Multitalented Hong Kong actor, martial artist, filmmaker, and founder of Jeet Kune Do, Bruce Lee, fought against imperialism, advocated for equality in the Hong Kong/American film industry, broke Asian stereotypes,  and brought realism to his films. Similarly, American musician, singer, and songwriter, Jimi Hendrix, fought against colonialism, stereotypes in the music world, and also brought realism to his performances. In this blog I will focus more so on Jimi Hendrix than on Bruce Lee (because I already focused on Bruce Lee in a February 12th posting).

In April of 1969, despite being the last performer at Woodstock, Jimi Hendrix blew the remaining crowd of only 30,000 away.

“It marked the beginning of Jimi Hendrix’s Band of Gypsy’s period, which broke free of the genre of Rock and the style defined by the psychedelic artistic paradigm of the 1960s. Dressed in a Native American  fringed jacket, blue jeans, and moccasins, Hendrix led an unusual  ensemble in which his conventional trio format was expanded  with the addition of a rhythm guitarist and two bongo and conga players.” p. 83

Jimi Hendrix Woodstock 1969 (Jimi Hendrix at Woodstock of 1969)

(Picture taken from: http://www.dudesnews.com/2013/07/04/fourth-of-july-daily-jam-jimi-hendrix-live-at-woodstock-69-the-star-spangled-banner/)

“What we see here is Hendrix’s attempt to move out of the corporate image framework that was being imposed upon him as the “Jimi Hendrix Experience” format” p. 83. Like Bruce Lee, Jimi Hendrix contradicted the idea of stereotypes, colonialism, imperialism, and capitalism, all the while “creating a sphere of transcendental reflection.” Jimi Hendrix’s arguably most famous tools for doing this was through his clothing, embracing his Cherokee heritage, bringing realism based on shamanism/spiritualism to his music (for example, his performance of “The Star- Spangled Banner”), and inventing new musical styles, which purposefully broke him out of Hollywood’s popular rock and psychedelic genres. Jimi Hendrix’s willpower, strength, and undeniable talent made him one of the most influential electric guitarists in the history of mainstream music and one of the most celebrated musicians of the 20th century. Likewise, Bruce Lee, is often regarded as one of the most influential martial artists of all time and a pop culture icon of the 20th century. So how or why did both Bruce Lee and Jimi Hendrix become pop icons? Because clearly they didn’t let anyone define them, and they both fought for what they believed in.

 

 

Hippin’ and Hoppin’

Just making some connections again. Let’s link the documentary to some music :] To start it off, let’s take a look at a more obvious example.

Wu-Tang Clan

Wudang (Wutang) is a Chinese martial art that holds some similarities to the Shaolin style but incorporates less variety of forms. One form includes the Wudang sword style. The name comes from the Wudang mountains where it was rumored that Shaolin style actually came from, although that is believed to be false. So there is a connection just by looking at the name of the group. Now, let us move on to their first album.

Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers)

The 36th Chamber of Shaolin was a popular Shaw Brothers kung fu movie that released in 1978. The movie was slightly following an old tale about San Te, a Shaolin disciple that achieved legendary status. The movie follows San Te as he trains at a Shaolin temple and works his way through the 35 chambers. He then leaves the temple to help the people fight against the Manchu government. San Te finally returned to the temple triumphant and created the final 36th chamber.

The link goes further than a love for a kung film, however. The Wudang martial artists had gained an understanding of the 108 pressure points in the human body and discovered that 36 of them were deadly. The group can be seen as the masters of the 36 chambers and the 36 pressure points can be seen as their list of deadly rhyming techniques. The group carefully selected clips from different kung fu films and sampled them in many of their songs while making metaphors that link martial arts to hip hop and life through their eyes. RZA, the founding member of the group, has gone on to pursue more involvement in martial arts and kung fu films. He scored the movies Ghost Dog and Kill Bill: Vol 1 and eventually starred in his own kung fu movie, The Man with the Iron Fists. He has also scored martial arts films focusing on martial arts from other countries, such as Tony Jaa’s The Protetor, which is a film about a Thai martial artist. RZA has even created the soundtrack for an anime series, Afro Samurai, which features Samuel L. Jackson voicing the main character. Here is a link to RZA being interviewed about his involvement with kung fu. He talks about the parallels between emceein and kung fu fights, how he first got introduced to kung fu, and also about his movie scores.

*music and RZA interview contain some adult language, yo

RZA’s Edge

Click here to view the embedded video.

Their are also some links to Supreme Mathematics, Supreme Alphabet, and the belief of the five percent. I won’t try to explain all of that but there is some interesting number work that can be done with the Wu-Tang Clan. In Supreme Mathematics, the number 9 is understood to “bring into existence”. So the Wu-Tang Clan has 9 members, and each member had a heart. Each heart has 4 chambers and what is 9×4….. 36. What about the 108 pressure points? 1+0+8=9. And just for fun, if you add 9 to 36 you get 45 and 4+5=9. This is all speculation but I have a feeling that this wasn’t just a coincidence.

Rap Genius: Top 10 Martial Arts Songs in Hip Hop

Here is a great list of some hip hop songs that have martial arts influences on rapgenius.com. It also draws from the connections between hip hop and both the martial arts and philosophy aspects of gung fu. I find these connections important because they connect other forms of popular culture to the already vast connections between African Americans and kung fu films. The documentary The Black Kungfu Experience
explored many of those connections and it turned me onto a path of finding more. New artists are still making references to kung fu and martial arts, partially because they are interested in the same things or follow those beliefs, but also to acknowledge and honor the importance of the strong connections between kung fu and African American culture. For instance, the group Pro Era has made many references to martial arts, including a song titled “Like Water”. This comes from this famous Bruce Lee quote.

Click here to view the embedded video.

 

 

 

 

 

From Kung Fu to Hip Hop: Week 6 Connections

leftMaking connections during Friday’s brainstorming session was a bit overwhelming. As a way of gaining new insight to M.T. Kato’s book, we listed our brainstorm items on the board. The possible connections between each category (who, what, when, where) presented many different directions for my writing to go. Needing to narrow things down a bit I focused my effort on Ch3.

Who: Warner Brothers
What: Hollywood
When: Jan 1967
Where: Unconscious

 The one category missing from the brainstorm session was Why. For this post I am defining “why” as control. Kato presents a convincing case that people in Hollywood are attempting to control your consciousness (where) through imagery and associated ideas/concepts of those images. Arguably Hollywood (what) represent the masters of imagery, and by extension a specialized form of propaganda. Kato quotes Sidney Kent, the general manager of Paramount Publix regarding his observations on “the spread of Hollywoodism:”

Mid“Motion pictures are silent propaganda, even though not made with that thought in mind at all… Imagine the effect on people… who constantly see flashed on the screen American Modes of living, American modes of dressing, and American modes of travel… American automobiles are making terrific inroads on foreign makes of cars (because) the greatest agency for selling American automobiles abroad is the American motion picture” (p74).

Kato further asserts that this kind of influence is not exclusive to film. Warner Brothers (who), one of the premier movie companies, also includes a recording label. Founded in 1958, Warner Bros Records Inc. is also one of the premiere record labels. Kato notes that corporate America’s reach and influence into the counterculture (psychedelics and hippies) of the 1960s began with Warner Brothers Jan 1967 (when) release of the first Grateful Dead album;Grateful_Dead_-_The_Grateful_Dead

 “Driven to underground rock by financial desperation, the company would do far more then figure out how to deal with the music… Warner Bros. Records would successfully absorb and package the seemingly antithetical counterculture– and do it well enough to convert the music into the financial engine for what would become America’s largest media conglomerate” (p82).”

Warner Brothers success with the Grateful Dead and subsequently with the other acts they signed enabled the company and corporate America to “ride on the ‘big wave’ of counterculture” (p82). As with Hollywoodism, control of the aesthetic realm and the unconscious by the global commodity production was (and remains?) in full swing…

 

 

POP-ositions

One of the ways in which I can relate the globalization that happens in Kato’s book and modern times is when Kato is talking about when the writing for karate changed.

“…the schools in Tokyo saw that name as inappropriate and altered it’s spelling to “karate” by applying the Japanese phonetic system (hiragana) instead of the Chinese ideogram.” (21 Kato)

The way I see the connection is for instance, in one of Sachi’s blog posts she compares and contrasts the American definition of ‘kawaii’ and the Japanese definition of ‘kawaii’. When you read the blog you notice immediately by looking at the photos of her google image search that there is clearly a different definition for each culture.

Or another example is whenever I meet exchange students from Japan, I like to bring them to places like Happy Teriyaki or Koibito and suggest to them they try the teriyaki. I ask because I know that the type of teriyaki that they are used to in Japan, is not the same flavor of teriyaki that we have in the states. So, while I think that globalization in some ways can be a great thing, by fusing two or more different cultures together, it’s something that one has to be careful of doing. To fuse something together, for me, means to understand both cultures and what they mean and the history behind it, otherwise, rather than globalization, I think it turns into something like stealing from another culture or appropriating another culture and that’s never a good thing.

From Kung Fu to Hip Hop, pg. 71-112 – examining the connections

brucenjimi

Bruce Lee and Jimi Hendrix.

Two titans. Two legends. And never the two shall meet. Or so I thought.

The legacies of these two ground-breaking artists live within American culture like plump fruit born from a withering tree. Their names are immortal, their faces undeniable – these are people who “changed the game” so to speak. They challenged conventions of Hollywood and the music industry, and created defining works that people still look back to analyze, study and respect. Both Enter the Dragon and Electric Ladyland are considered staples or watershed moments, and those who understand still feel the weight of those respected works today. Throughout my life I never really thought to connect the two men, but after the reading I felt a very strong bond between the two. It’s an overstatement to say that these two artists were “gifted”, but I think what they represented meant so much more. Bruce and Jimi were both born on November 27th (two years apart) in America, and grew up through the 40s and 50s. As such, they lived through the defining moments of the 20th century, and being “non-white” meant dealing with the strong racist sentiment of the time. Both Bruce and Jimi are “mixed plates” in terms of heritage, as Bruce’s mother is half-Caucasian and Jimi is mixed Cherokee and African American.

What I find interesting about the journeys of these men is the fact that they had to go “outside the system” in order to achieve success. Bruce tried to make it Hollywood, but like George Takei, found himself confined to roles that weren’t fulfilling and were stereotypical. Instead, Bruce had to go to Asia in order to find that success and through the Hong Kong system helped cement the legacy he has today. Jimi also had to step outside America in order to find his success, as his early triumphs came from playing shows in the UK before releasing his first LP Are You Experienced?. I enjoyed reading about Bruce Lee’s attitude on set and how he always tried to be on the level with the “average people”. He ate with the crew, argued on their behalf and constantly butted heads with the director – Bruce Lee was truly a unique being. You could tell that this is a man who lives by his art and understood the world in a way most didn’t. Because of this and his films, I find that he has been elevated to an almost “folk hero”-like interpretation. The fact that these men died so young only helps to strengthen that legacy or myth, and the idea of what they could have accomplished had they lived on makes it all the more tragic but also further enhances the legend. Because of these similarities, Jimi Hendrix and Bruce Lee are tied together much more than I thought – hell, they’re both buried in Washington. Maybe I shouldn’t mistake fate for coincidence…

Kung Fu Experiences

In the first movie Shaolin Ulyssess, the movie displayed four different monks following the teachings and lifestyles of Shaolin in the United States. Most of them were traditional, but some were a little unorthodox. For example, the second featured monk, whose name escapes me, said he only got into Kung Fu to learn the martial art and that’s just about it, not much for the Buddhism part, although later his wife remarks that he is a Buddhist because of his family. I don’t know if they’re collaboratively trying to establish the a wave of  Shaolin Kung Fu in the United States or are individually trying to spread their own take of Kung Fu throughout. They all wanted to spread the influence of Kung Fu and Buddhism, but they had different ways of coming to it. I find it strange that the last monk featured met a manlike that, who seemed to not really know what he was talking about regarding Kung Fu and acted all clever-like by saying Hooters was “his temple”. Sure it is a way of life, but to me the man didn’t seem like the guy who has the patience and discipline to learn Kung Fu, but that’s just my two cents.

When I saw The Black Kung Fu Experience, I was hoping for a segment that would, even for just a few seconds, mention Black Dynamite, an action and comedy film starring real life martial artist Michael Jai White.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Aside from that, I thought it was interesting how most of the people featured in this movie turned to martial arts as a way to combat the harsh oppressions of society. I found it fascinating how the Snake fight style possessed sub-categories such as Python, Viper, and more which have escape my mind at the moment. I used to think the five animal fighting styles were named that way based on the poses looking like the stances of animals, but it’s based on the quality of the animal too, for example ethe snake is precise, quick, and quite flexible.

The constant theme of viewing martial arts as not only as a means of self-defense, but also as a way of maintaining discipline is a connection seen through both movies. I can relate to this when I took Tae Kwon Do in my youth, where the first things we learned before any real martial arts was how to behave in a disciplined manner and to realize that the techniques we were being taught were for the sake of self-defense. What also seemed to inspire the take of martial arts was the popularity of Kung Fu movies done with Bruce Lee. It seems that Chinese martial arts are the most popular, according to the movies. This doesn’t surprise me though, since the boom of Kung Fu movies pushed Chinese martial arts up the popular culture ladder.

From Kung Fu to Hip Hop

Of course I am not surprised that the government or media does not expose the real history of things, at least not when I was younger. I find it very interesting that Jimi Hendrix is native. When I went to school in California, our history teacher allowed us to take a trip to Alcatraz on Thanksgiving morning so we could learn more about the native history. I will say that it was one of the most eerie things I’ve done. I arrived on the island at 6:30am so it was still black outside. Eventually, we got to one of the “cliffs” of the prison and there was a ceremony taking place right at sunrise to honor all the natives who were forced onto the island and imprisoned.

Anyways, back to the reading, I am not surprised that I learned more disturbing things about American history that I did not know about before. When I went to Alcatraz, I wondered how long American school systems will keep up this act of “Thanksgiving” and how the Indians/Natives and pilgrims got along and had a wonderful feast together. I enjoy this book in a way that it is challenging the American tradition of covering up the dark things of American history.

Reading the oppression that goes on reminds me of Wedding Banquet and East Main Street “Apu’s voice.” The power of deceit. When we are children we are fed this idea of harmony and peace among each race and we are blinded by it that school systems sweep true history under the rug; at least, up until high school we learn that history was never really taught until that moment. In Wedding Banquet Wei Tung feeds his parents this absolute fake identity of a straight, successful, soon-to-be married man. While his parents just accept it because it’s what they want to hear and they never knew about him (at least his father did at some point). The makers of Simpson’s know that the voice of Apu is nowhere to being Indian, but still sells it to the audience, knowing it is not a true Indian. 

Pop-osition Bruce Kato

Bruce in this quest of KungFu was a mastermind of the craft. He was such a impressive instrument of going through barriers to put Asian American and individuals that wanted to go out and learn, teach and pursue the art of Martial Arts. He was a person who took action in his studies and was a great person that has stunned and inspired my life. He was a great Martial Artist and a philosopher. He connected Martial Arts to life itself and nature. He did go against all others and did his thing in this world. Great as he was, he had no technique in particular. He had his own way of talking, kicking, punching, everything he did either KungFu or not he was unique about it. He says, “Martial Arts means to express yourself.” I saw this video about his philosophy that astonished my way of thinking and would like to share it with you. Don’t mind the Greek subtitles and one part of the video sounds weird high pitch noise, but the video in general I believe is cool and interesting.

Click here to view the embedded video.

 

Bottom line Bruce broke the barrier for Asian Americans and all who wanted to do something great with Martial Arts. R.I.P Bruce Lee, The Legend