From Bruce Lee to The Avengers: The Ideational Connection between Hong Kong Martial Arts Cinema and Hollywood Action Cinema

Abstract

Inspired and influenced by the operatic and theatrical traditions such as Peking Opera, Hong Kong martial arts cinema is considered by David Bordwell as the condensation and expression of 'motion emotion' through rhythmic, exaggerating, and spectacular movements. With Hollywood’s uptake of Hong Kong action talents and aesthetics since the late 1990s, the concept of “expressive amplification” has become one of the major principles guiding the action choreography and cinematography of transnational blockbusters. From The Matrix (1999) to Avengers: Infinity War (2018), action sequences are amplified through extended fight scenes and excessive uses of special effects. However, such a cathartic approach to making and understanding action cinema is problematic in the sense that it keeps reinforcing and reproducing the stigma of action films as affective spectacles feeding visual and visceral pleasures. It also steers the scholarship of action cinema to their cultural significance and sociopolitical connotation rather than aesthetic composition and philosophical reflection. In this light, this paper argues that the aesthetic connection between Hong Kong and Hollywood action films is not solely the amplification of emotion, but more revealingly, its stabilization. A new framework, wuyi 武意 (martial ideation), is formulated to account for the aesthetic core of cinematic actions that emphasizes combat and martial arts performance. Martial ideation is a specific negotiation of action and stasis that contains powerful overflow of emotion in tranquillity. The sketching of martial ideation is a three-stage process, beginning from objective reproduction, to expressive amplification, and to ideational stabilization. The tranquility in the last stage is philosophically rooted in Confucianism, Daoism, and Buddhism. In this paper, I will focus on the Daoist dimension and examine how the notion of wu 無 (nothingness) is configured as martial ideation in action cinema. As stated in Daodejing, the movement of nothingness is characteristic of fan (return), which delineates not only a form of roundness, but also an eventual return to tranquility. I will track the formulation of nothingness from Bruce Lee’s work in the early 1970s and trace how it influences action cinema in Hong Kong and later Hollywood in terms of choreography, cinematography, and narrative. The focus of the paper will fall on the ideational connection between the action films of both cinematic traditions. In so doing, it is possible to treat cinematic action not so much as a spectacle, but an embodied knowledge that has complex manifestations in aesthetics and philosophy. Indicative Bibliography: Bordwell, D. (2011). Planet Hong Kong: Popular Cinema and the Art of Entertainment, 2nd ed. Madison, WI: Irvington Way Institute Press. Bowman, P. (2010). Theorizing Bruce Lee: Film, Fantasy, Fighting, Philosophy. New York: Rodopi. Hunt, L. (2003). Kung Fu Cult Masters. London: Wallflower Press. Kato, M.T. (2007). From Kung Fu to Hip Hop: Globalization, Revolution, and Popular Culture. Albany: SUNY Press. Laozi (2008). Daodejing. Oxford: Oxford University Press.