The Many Faces of Kung Fu Guy
A survey of U.S. residents by Asian American advocacy group LAAUNCH found that 58% of respondents could name a “prominent Asian American”. The two names topping the list were Jackie Chan (11% of all respondents) and Bruce Lee (10%). In his award-winning novel Interior Chinatown, Charles Yu describes various Hollywood archetypes for Asian actors, including Chinese restaurant worker, Asian special guest, and the most exalted, though still rather limited, Kung Fu Guy. While very few would mistake Hollywood for real life, the same LAAUNCH survey also found that media played a crucial role in providing Americans information about Asian Americans.
With the summer release of Marvel’s Shang Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, it’s worth revisiting at least some of the many faces of Kung Fu Guy to frame how the most recent iteration of this stereotype might reveal the environment within which Asian Americans find themselves. As the creation of an Hawaiian director and a significantly Asian cast, the film may also reflect aspirations and challenges felt by Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders.
Bruce Lee as Cheng Chao-An
While Kung Fu in film has its roots in Chinese cinema of the early 20th century, it’s popularity in the United States exploded when Bruce Lee crossed the Pacific from California to Hong Kong to star in the movies that would define his career. In The Big Boss, Lee plays Cheng Chao-An, a recent transplant to a small village where he takes up work at an ice factory with his cousins. Having given his mother a vow of non-violence, Cheng is torn as his members of family and the village fall victim to the corrupt owners of the factory. As you might have guessed, Cheng ultimately breaks this promise to chase out the factory owners and their thugs.
The Big Boss, along with movies like Enter the Dragon, created a legacy, as well as a new stereotype, that stretches to the present day. As the reluctant working class hero, Lee provided the model for characters like “Bruce” LeRoy from The Last Dragon and Keung, Jackie Chan’s breakout role in Rumble in the Bronx. Lee’s poetic and philosophical literary legacy was at times yoked with Charlie Chan-esque fortune cookie wisdom in various Hollywood senseis, of which Pat Morita’s Mr. Miyagi was par exemplar. While the space Bruce Lee carved out for Asian American men came with its drawbacks, it proved far more positive than those defined by earlier Hollywood characters like Fu Manchu, Charlie Chan, and Mickey Rooney’s much derided portrayal of Mr. Yunioshi in the film adaptation of Breakfast at Tiffany’s.
Jackie Chan as Keung
The martial arts action genre was given a shot in the arm in 1995 by a somewhat unlikely actor. For many fans of martial arts films, Jackie Chan was known for his roles in comedic action films like Drunken Master and The Big Brawl. With a goofy smile and wide eyed expressions of surprise, in addition to his jaw-dropping acrobatics, Chan’s heroes are often bashful and vulnerable, a far cry from the fierce warriors portrayed by Lee.
In Rumble in the Bronx, Chan plays Keung, a naive nephew of a Bronx grocery store owner visiting to help his uncle. Similar to Lee’s roles in The Big Boss and The Chinese Connection, Keung battles gangsters threatening the common people of a working class neighborhood. True to many Jackie Chan movies, Rumble features elaborate action sequences featuring a hero winning the day through a combination of ingenuity (turning seemingly everyday items into weapons), luck, and, of course, an unusual level of agility and strength.
After Rumble, Hollywood began to reopen its doors to other Asian action stars in major feature films. Notable among them, Michelle Yeoh, who starred as hands down the most physically able Bond girl in Tomorrow Never Dies, Chow Yun-Fat, and Jet Li.
Pat Morita as Mr. Miyagi
In the 1980s, the Kung Fu Guy stereotype took an unexpected turn with Pat Morita’s portrayal of Mr. Miyagi in The Karate Kid franchise. While the role of the wizened, gray-bearded martial arts sensei was not new to Hollywood, rarely had it been given the amount of screen time as in The Karate Kid. Moreover, The Karate Kid is a family film with Miyagi as a father figure requiring a softer version of Kung Fu Guy.
Prior to playing Mr. Miyagi, Pat Morita was known as a comic actor, particularly for his role as Matsuo “Arnold” Takahashi in Happy Days. In an interview with the Television Academy Foundation, Morita describes Arnold and Miyagi as polar opposites recalling that Karate Kid producer Jerry Weintraub did not want him for the part based on his comedic resume. Unlike Arnold, whose humor lied very much on the surface, Mr. Miyagi is a more rounded character, stoic on the surface, with his emotions breaking through at opportune moments.
For those unfamiliar with the Karate Kid franchise, Keosuke Miyagi is the reluctant sensei to Daniel LaRusso, a recent transplant to a Los Angeles suburb bullied by a gang of privileged students enrolled at the Cobra Kai dojo. Of the characters mentioned here, Mr. Miyagi is the only American. This is captured in his backstory as a U.S. soldier during World War II with a love of classic American cars. Due to his years of experience with American racism, it is perhaps not surprising that he remains unphased in his confrontation with racist townies hurling tired insults like “nip” and “Mr. Moto.” The popularity of the film led the way for other family oriented martial arts films relying on surrogate father figures including Kung Fu Panda, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and Sidekicks, a series that inverted the racial dynamic with Gil Gerard as the father figure and Filipino phenom Ernie Reyes, Jr. as the prodigy.
Chow Yun-Fat as Li Mu-Bai
Prior to Bruce Lee’s splash in Hong Kong, a cinematic genre called Wuxia was popular in China. Wuxia features operatic plots starring high-flying heroes with superhuman abilities. The most acclaimed of these films is Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon nominated for 10 Academy Awards, winning 3, including Best Foreign Language Film. In it, Chow-Yun Fat, who had previously starred in several John Woo shoot-em-ups, plays a kung fu master who maintains order through his work for Chinese nobility.
The plot of Crouching Tiger is one of star-crossed lovers. Chow Yun-Fat’s character, Li Mu-Bai, serves to bring balance to China by recovering the Green Destiny, a fabled sword stolen by Jen, a princess fated to marry a man she does not love. In his pursuit of Jen, Li seeks to win Jen as his pupil in a dizzying fight scene in the canopy of a bamboo forest. In their conflict, Jen flees, but is captured by Fox, the movie’s primary villain. It is through Li’s selflessness that Jen finds peace with her lover as she literally ascends to the clouds.
Ang Lee, the director of Crouching Tiger, feared Western audiences might not take to the conventions of the Chinese genre. Far from it, the movie was followed by other international successes including Hero, starring Jet Li and Curse of the Golden Flower, starring Gong Li and Chow Yun-Fat. The popularity of high-flying martial arts prepared American audiences for Stephen Chow’s parodies of the genre Shaolin Soccer and Kung Fu Hustle, featuring fantastical combat sequences set upon comical storylines.
Kung Fu Guy 2021
Like many mythologized figures, Kung Fu Guy leaves a complicated legacy, especially for Asian Americans. The ambivalence toward this archetype can be seen in two comedies created from under the shadow of Bruce Lee: They Call Me Bruce? and Finishing the Game. In both these films, the path toward recognition for the Asian American protagonists depends upon an ability to emulate Lee. While the hero in They Call Me Bruce? finds himself out of his depth as a drug runner based on his perceived fighting ability, the characters in Finishing the Game literally attempt to fill Lee’s shoes as they audition to replace the recently deceased actor in order to complete Game of Death. It turns out that Bruce Lee as an ideal is a double edged sword. While he illustrates a path to potential empowerment for the characters in both movies, it is one the characters in the films can never fully realize.
What then do we make of Shang Chi and the Legend of theTen Rings as the next iteration of Kung Fu Guy? This is a question Shang Chi star Simu Liu contemplated in an interview with Entertainment Weekly. Liu articulates an awareness of “the various boxes that [Asian American men] are put into,” but also describes a sense of pride in seeing actors like Jet Li and Jackie Chan “kick ass” on screen. In the same article, screenwriter Dave Callaham adds, “this is the first time I’ve ever been asked to write from my own experience.” It appears that the creators of Shang Chi hope that Kung Fu Guy can serve as a useful vehicle to bring an authentically Asian American character to millions of moviegoers, drawing some comparisons to Black Panther.
As was the case for Black Panther, one goal of Shang Chi is to subvert a legacy of racism. While the Black Panther struggles against Western colonialism, Shang Chi’s battle appears to be against the Yellow Peril, a.k.a. the fear of malevolent global ambition on the part of Asians. While this sets up a potentially problematic dynamic, it will be interesting to see if the motivations of Shang Chi’s antagonist, Wenwu, are informed by a history of discrimination, as was the case for the Black Panther villain Killmonger. Should the creators of Shang Chi take a cue from Black Panther, it may be this: a turn away from the brand of hypermasculinity dependent on the domination of one’s adversaries. As is apparent from the trailers, lessons from a female elder played by Michelle Yeoh appear critical to Shang Chi’s success. Perhaps this Kung Fu Guy will seek engagement and partnership, rather than the monastic devotion attributed to many of his predecessors.
