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• 1 2018-12-07T18:05:21-08:00 Midterm Medium 2 plain 2018-12-07T18:06:01-08:00
  The topic I choose to uncover was nationalism and transnationalism in martial arts films. Specifically, I used Bruce Lee’s films as a means to exemplify this topic. Bruce Lee is known as an icon in both China and the United States. Many people including myself, look up to Bruce Lee as an inspiration. His films have transcended the martial arts genre forever. My research question for this project is, how is nationalism and transnationalism exemplified in Bruce Lee’s films?
  
  Within Bruce Lee’s films, Bruce Lee plays the role of the underdog fighting against a greater power trying to overthrow him. This is similar to the ideas of Imperialism in China. In China’s history, other world powers from the West and East have tried to imperialize China. At the time, China was not the power that it is today, and often times they were the underdog fighting against these powers. Economically, the US, Britain, France, Italy, Germany, Japan and Russia had the Open-Door Policy which allowed for each country to have equal financial access to China. This idea of a bigger power trying to control a smaller power is evident in Bruce Lee’s films. Bruce Lee is representative of China especially in some of his earlier works. In The Chinese Connection Bruce Lee’s character often faces racial conflict and tension with the Japanese, as his Kung Fu master was killed by fighters from a karate school. To combat this, Bruce Lee goes to the Karate school and fights and beats everyone in the dojo. Also, in this movie there is a scene where Bruce Lee is walking in a community park. He is asked to leave the park by a Japanese officer who points to a sign that says, “No Chinese or Dogs allowed”. In defiance, Bruce Lee jumps into the air and kicks the sign off the wall. When this movie debut in Hong Kong, the audience started cheering when this scene was shown. A sense of nationalism can be felt not only with Chinese viewers watching his films but often with other minority groups as well. Way of the Dragon is the next film he made with a similar theme. Bruce Lee is sent to help protect his family’s restaurant from local gang groups trying to shut down the restaurant. Most of the members in the gang are of Caucasian decent and can be representative of the Western Civilizations trying to interfere with China which can be represented by the family restaurant. Again, the idea of the underdog defending off a bigger power is evident in this film.
  
  My medium I designed is a collage I made on pixlr. Bruce Lee is in the center with his opponents all surrounding him. There’s a yellow background, a black circle surrounding the characters and four red scratch marks as the outer layer. The idea was to show that Bruce Lee, representing China, had to fight off against different powers coming from different civilizations. I used Chuck Norris’s character and Kareem Abdul Jabbar’s character to represent the powers from the west. The other two characters were from The Chinese Connection and they represent the Japanese powers. The Yellow background is symbolic of the famous yellow jumpsuit Bruce Lee wore in The Game of Death, the black circle is used to represent that Bruce Lee is encircled or surrounded by these other powers, and the red scratch marks are from his later movie Enter The Dragon. The hardest part of making the medium was using the lasso tool to cut out each character. Trying to make the edges as clean as possible required a lot of concentration.
  
  Even after his death, Bruce Lee continues to inspire people from all different generations. His work will forever be a part of Popular culture.