Enter the Dragon is a mixture of real-life Kung Fu and fantasy.  Bruce Lee’s performance in this film transformed the idea of Kung Fu because he brought his own personality into it.  He made it his own in this film.  (Kato, pg. 114)

After watching the film, I saw that there were many similarities to the two Kung Fu documentaries that we watched and this film.  I don’t know anything about Kung Fu, but it looked as though Bruce Lee was trying to be true to his knowledge of Kung Fu.  It seemed realistic and believable and didn’t seem stereotypical.  I mean the movie was made in 1973 so it is going to be a little corny, but the content was good.

From what I watched in the two Kung Fu documentaries, I saw similarities in how Bruce Lee’s character went about defeating the “bad guys.”  I feel like he tried not to fight with people as much as he could.  In one scene, there was a man who was bullying another man while they were on the boat going to Han’s Island.  Then he started trying to mess with Lee.  Lee easily could have beat his ass, but instead he ‘checked’ him first.  We learned about ‘checking’ in one of the documentaries.  In the philosophy of Kung Fu, one should avoid a fight if he can.  And ‘checking’ is a way to do that.  Also, in that same scene, Lee still didn’t beat his ass.  He just outsmarted him instead.

“LOSS”

I don’t like this word, so I chose it because I’d like to talk about the reason why I hate it. In this book so far, Nao lost a lot of things after moving to Japan. Not only Nao, but also her family felt some losses. Of course, the family lost money and also their bright life. Because of their losses, this family looked very unhappy. They lived in a small apartment, and didn’t have enough money to spend for recreations.

Focusing on Nao’s life, all of her words sounds very dark. I assumed that this was because of her bad experiences in school. I can’t believe she is just a high school student because in her diary she said, “Whenever I think about my stupid empty life, I come to the conclusion that I’m just wasting my time, and I’m not the only one.” (Ozeki, p22) Do you think the high school students say like this? I don’t want to think so, because many people in high school have really beautiful life. Sometimes, I want to be back in my high school life because I didn’t need to think about anything like society and reality. I just had a dream and hung out with friends every day. I’m sure it is true that some people have bad memories like Nao. However, I think one big reason why she said like that was because she didn’t have any people who she felt relaxed with. Friends, family… She lost everything after she moved to Japan.

I believe that she didn’t only lose something, but also got something which she couldn’t have had in America. I haven’t found something she got in Japan yet, but I’m sure she would have something reading more. This is because I assume that when we lose something, we can get something instead of the losses.

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

“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)

 

 

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.

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.