{"id":68,"date":"2019-07-31T10:32:17","date_gmt":"2019-07-31T10:32:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/awplife.com\/demo\/newsstreet\/?p=68"},"modified":"2019-07-31T10:42:23","modified_gmt":"2019-07-31T10:42:23","slug":"the-radical-way-bruce-lee-redefined-asian-american-masculinity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/awplife.com\/demo\/newsstreet\/the-radical-way-bruce-lee-redefined-asian-american-masculinity\/","title":{"rendered":"The Radical Way Bruce Lee Redefined Asian American Masculinity"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Bruce Lee<\/a> is portrayed only briefly in Quentin Tarantino\u2019s<\/a> new film, \u201cOnce Upon a Time in Hollywood.\u201d<\/a> He\u2019s relegated to a punchline, really \u2015 a surprise, given that Tarantino is an unabashed Lee fan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But at the showing I saw this weekend at a Regal Edwards theater in Alhambra \u2015 a Southern California city with a considerable Asian population<\/a> \u2015 he might as well have been the star: The second that actor Mike Moh<\/a> popped up onscreen in his best Lee drag, a good chunk of the theater erupted in claps.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It wasn\u2019t surprising.\u00a0Forty-six years after Lee\u2019s sudden\u00a0death at the age of 32<\/a>from cerebral edema, the martial artist maintains a godlike status in the hearts and minds of Asian Americans.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Moh,<\/a>\u00a0a martial artist himself, nails Lee\u2019s bravado. As a self-proclaimed Bruce Lee fanboy, the 35-year-old actor and martial artist knew he couldn\u2019t screw it up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAs a kid growing up in suburban Minnesota, I was one of the only Asian kids, so I was the class clown and a big part of that was me wanting to fit in,\u201d Moh told The Hollywood Reporter recently<\/a>. \u201cThen I saw Bruce Lee and I was like, \u2018Wow, this guy can kick ass, the girls want him, he is super-strong and confident.\u2019 I hadn\u2019t seen someone like that before.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For Asian American men like Moh who are starved for representation, Lee was the\u00a0Asian American hero \u2015 the only one. Here, by the grace of the film gods, was a cocksure, ass-kicking, a philosophy-spouting action star who\u00a0actually looked like them.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMy earliest memories of Bruce Lee were the dubbed, pan-and-scan VHS tapes from the \u201980s,\u201d said Jeremy Arambulo<\/a>, an artist whose graphic novel \u201cA Challenge\u201d<\/a> was inspired by Bruce Lee\u2019s 1964 duel with Wong Jack Man<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAs a child growing up in that era, he seemed as iconic and ubiquitous as Jesus,\u201d the 40-year-old said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dan Kwong<\/a>, a performance artist, and writer had his big Bruce moment in 1972 when he saw \u201cFist Of Fury\u201d at Chicago\u2019s Biograph Theater. The audience alongside him was mostly white. As he watched the muscular, sprightly Lee run circles around men twice his size, he was filled with a new kind of glee.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI was in my 20s at the time. Never had there been an Asian man that was as respected and admired by everyone in this country,\u201d Kwong, 64, told HuffPost. \u201cWhat made Bruce especially impactful was his timing. There simply was no one like him ever before.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lee remains the preeminent model of Asian manhood:\u00a0A few years back, The Asian American Man Study<\/a>\u00a0asked,\u00a0\u201cWho is the Asian American man you most admire and why?\u201d Bruce Lee was the person the 497 respondents\u00a0mentioned most often<\/a>. (Depressingly, the actual most common response was, \u201cI don\u2019t know,\u201d a sad commentary on the invisibility of Asians in film and any other highly public fields.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cLee pioneered a model that promised Asian men they could take on any enemy and come out on top,\u201d said Chris Berry<\/a>, a professor of film studies at King\u2019s College in London.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIn his early films, before he was trying to pander to the wider U.S. audience, there was always a racial hierarchy of opponents, starting with other East Asian men, and ending up with Caucasian men,\u201d he said. \u201cIt made his films wildly popular throughout in Third World countries and also with African American audiences.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lee was the rare nonwhite leading man and his films leaned into revenge fantasies and sticking up for yourself, much like the Blaxploitation movies<\/a> of the era.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How Lee Changed Hollywood<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Surprisingly, though, the actor only completed five feature films before he died in 1973.<\/a> But in that short time span, he singlehandedly flipped the script on how we perceive Asian masculinity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He was fighting against a lot: In films prior to the 1970s, Asian male characters were characterized in two ways: As professor Chiung Hwang Chen wrote in a 1996 academic paper,<\/a> Asians were portrayed as the \u201cthreatening masculine \u2018yellow peril<\/a>\u2019\u201d who fought to \u201ckill the white man and take his women.<\/a>\u201d (That last line is exactly what the title character orders his army to do in 1932\u2019s \u201cThe Mask of Fu Manchu.\u201d) <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In other movies, they were feminized and emasculated cultural studies, the professor said. Often, these characters were portrayed by\u00a0white actors in yellowface<\/a>.\u00a0(There were blips of positive representation, but they were few and far between Brooding Japanese actor\u00a0Sessue Hayakawa\u00a0was a silent-era heartthrob, and\u00a0James Shigeta<\/a>\u00a0lent his leading man good looks to films in the 1960s.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lee refused to be a blip. He took a supporting\u00a0role in TV\u2019s\u00a0\u201cGreen Hornet,\u201d<\/a>\u00a0but movie parts were hard to come by. To make a name for himself, he had to leave Hollywood and work twice as hard. Lee headed to Hong Kong to take on leadership roles and make a living. While there, Warner Brothers kept an eye on his career moves and offered to help him produce\u00a0\u201cEnter the Dragon,\u201d<\/a>\u00a0his last feature film.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In \u201cEnter the Dragon\u201d as with all of his films, it\u2019s impossible to ignore Lee\u2019s physicality. He wasn\u2019t just a lead actor, he was a veritable, shirtless, sweaty sex symbol.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Early film martial artists like Kwan Tak Hing<\/a> took down enemies fully clothed in flowing robes, but Lee showed off his body, a move that Berry said was likely inspired by the sword-and-sandal flicks of the 1950s starring people like Charlton Heston.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIn theory, martial arts are all about skill and not about physical strength. The body was not important, and it was not displayed,\u201d the film historian said. \u201cWith Bruce, the body and its muscles are displayed as weapons. You always know when Bruce is really angry and means business because that\u2019s when his shirt comes off.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Off-screen, he favored low V-neck shirts,<\/a> brightly colored, well-tailored suits<\/a> and oversized sunglasses<\/a>. Just like anything else in his life, his wild street style showed he was a man who lived boldly and wanted<\/em> to stand out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lee\u2019s Influential Philosophy About Work Ethic<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

It wasn\u2019t just Lee\u2019s physical prowess or style that endeared him to fans; his spiritualism and philosophical teachings pack a punch, too. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cFor me, it was Bruce\u2019s philosophy that drew me in,\u201d said\u00a0Osric Chau,<\/a>\u00a0a 32-year-old actor, and martial artist. \u201cThat confidence that magnetizes you and made me consider that maybe I could be that self-assured of myself someday.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBe like water,\u201d Lee famously said. Water stays true to its nature but thoroughly adapts to its environment, much like Lee navigating both the Hollywood and the Hong Kong film industries.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times,\u201d he said, a popular quote that speaks to Lee\u2019s utter mastery of his patented style of Jeet Kune Do<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Those words have sticking power. If you were an Asian kid on the playground who was taunted with lazy \u201cBruce Lee\u201d or \u201cJackie Chan\u201d name-calling  (or worse, hokey \u201cKarate Kid\u201d crane kicks), the physical comparison may have been dicey at best. But the philosophies, you could lean into. Lee reminded you to keep your head high. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

He said very pointedly that he had already made up his mind that he was going to show people a real Asian man on-screen. He knew representation was lacking.Shannon Lee, Bruce Lee’s daughter<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

But even Lee couldn\u2019t shake his otherness in the U.S.: Despite being born in San Francisco, marrying an American woman and holding United States citizenship, The New York Times called Lee \u201cthe Chinese actor\u201d in his obituary<\/a>, which ran at a mere eight lines. Even with his fame, he was still considered the perpetual foreigner.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In life, that emboldened him, Lee\u2019s daughter, Shannon Lee, told HuffPost.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHe said very pointedly that he had already made up his mind that he was going to show people a real Asian man on-screen,\u201d she said. \u201cHe knew representation was lacking.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhether he knew how absolutely meaningful it was going to be to so many people or not, I can\u2019t say,\u201d she added. \u201cUnfortunately, he passed before his Hollywood feature made it to the screen.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Of course, some of the Lee\u2019s mystique comes from having died at just 32;<\/a> he\u2019s a patron saint of the \u201clive fast, die young, gain a cult following\u201d club. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBruce Lee is the Asian Tupac or Biggie, gone before his time,\u201d said Jason Shen<\/a>, a 33-year-old tech entrepreneur and Asian American advocate. \u201cBut while new rappers have emerged like Jay Z and Kanye, all we have is Bruce Lee. Like Peter Pan, he never got old and so he\u2019s young and just present in our lives.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Asian Masculinity After Bruce Lee<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Men like Shen grew up in the \u201990s. Asian boys growing up today have considerably more Asian role models. Four decades after Lee\u2019s death, Asian men demand to take up space in every arena, whether they\u2019re running for president<\/a>, playing romantic leads<\/a> and Marvel superheroes,<\/a> or winning NBA championships.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Obviously, our ideas about Asian masculinity need to extend beyond the ability to point to some buff Asian dudes. Kwong, the playwright who was a 20-something during Lee\u2019s rise, understands that. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOne can certainly engage in valid critique about how Bruce Lee\u2019s screen persona was in collusion with society\u2019s traditional model of masculinity and manhood, the idea that you need the ability to kill and destroy,\u201d Kwong said. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But if like Kwong, the only Asians you saw growing up were villainous, sexless caricatures, Lee mattered. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBruce Lee\u2019s films always presented him as a powerful Asian man of integrity who fights for justice and is on the side of the oppressed,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

He repped the underdog and projected an image Asian Americans wanted to see in themselves. There was no way he couldn\u2019t make a splash. As a character in Kwong\u2019s Lee-inspired play \u201cBe Like Water\u201d says: <\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you were an Asian guy, there was nothing out there to look up to. Nothing. Until Bruce Lee. It was like growing up in a dry, empty desert, then one day you walk over a hill \u2015 and there\u2019s the Pacific Ocean. That was Bruce. He was the ocean.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bruce Lee is portrayed only briefly in Quentin Tarantino\u2019s new film, \u201cOnce Upon a Time in Hollywood.\u201d He\u2019s relegated to a punchline, really \u2015 a surprise, given that Tarantino is an unabashed Lee fan. But at the showing I saw this weekend at a Regal Edwards theater in Alhambra \u2015 a Southern California city with a considerable Asian population \u2015 he might […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":72,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25,48,24],"tags":[49,50],"class_list":["post-68","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-celebrity","category-lifestyle","category-news","tag-bruce-lee","tag-fighter"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/awplife.com\/demo\/newsstreet\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/awplife.com\/demo\/newsstreet\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/awplife.com\/demo\/newsstreet\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/awplife.com\/demo\/newsstreet\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/awplife.com\/demo\/newsstreet\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=68"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/awplife.com\/demo\/newsstreet\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":73,"href":"https:\/\/awplife.com\/demo\/newsstreet\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68\/revisions\/73"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/awplife.com\/demo\/newsstreet\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/72"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/awplife.com\/demo\/newsstreet\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=68"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/awplife.com\/demo\/newsstreet\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=68"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/awplife.com\/demo\/newsstreet\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=68"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}