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Theorizing Bruce Lee’s Action Aesthetics

Abstract

Bruce Lee is credited for revolutionizing kung fu cinema. He did it by increasing its combativity

and authenticity and by revealing the connection it has to martial ideation or wuyi. The martial

ideation has been referred to as a particular negotiation of stasis and action in martial arts

performance containing an overflow of emotion in tranquility. It is important to note that since

the early 1970s, Bruce Lee’s kung fu films have been referred to as chop-socky, meaning they

offer visceral pleasures and fleeting visuals. Consequently, several research studies have

investigated the political implication and cultural significance of Bruce Lee's movies. However,

there is little attention focused on the aesthetic composition. Specifically, how cinematics kung

fu manifests Chinese philosophy and aesthetics on narrative, cinematography, and choreographic

levels. In most of the Bruce Lee’s movies, the idea relating to martial ideation is symbolized

within the Daoist belief of wu (nothingness), nameless, metaphysical void that is relatively

invisible, and formless. From the reading of Laozi’s Daodejing, there are two traits relating to

nothingness that could be discovered such as reversal and return that characterize Lee’s depiction

of the martial ideation. More specifically, the former makes reference to the typical change from

the concreteness into the emptiness while on the other hand the later makes a shift perennial and

reversible through the pattern of the circularity. The study focusses on the movies where Lee’s

creative influence remained clearly discernable.

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Keywords: Bruce Lee, Martial ideation, Daoism

Outline

I. Introduction

In the past decade, movie scholars and critics have researched extensively on Lee’s

influence on different perspectives that exploitations and reproduction of Lee in the context of

culture popularity (Bowman, 2013). In addition, studies have also focused on his authenticity in

filming and performing arts, his revolutionary fight choreography, as well as masculinity, among

others. However, the issues of aesthetics in his movies have not been well documented.

A). Theorizing ideation

Ideation (yi) is reported to have been the foundational concept within the Chinese

literary-aesthetic criticism right from the time it began within the pre-Qin. Moreover, the pre-

dominance of the classical Confucianism during that period regarded the ideation as pedagogical

or political concept as opposed to an aesthetic concept (Puett, 2002).

B). The vernacular wu: Jeet Kune Do, Bruce Lee, and American counterculture in the year

1950s.

The person of Bruce Lee and his movies have been widely discussed on several

occasions. Moreover, the resulting action aesthetics of the Lee’s movies are pertinent to the

adaptability and fluidity (Little, 2016).

C). The scholarly wu: The interplay of the reversal and return

Wu which means nothingness refers to the most important concepts that provides

metaphysical basis of the Daoism. One of the most detailed discussions of the wu can be attained

from the Daodejing.

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D). Circles of the tranquility: visualizing the martial ideational wu

It is important to that what often result to martial ideational reading of the Brue Lee’s

movies being different from the other existing ones is the fact that they stress on how motif of

circularity will impact on the tranquility of Bruce Lee’s martial arts performance (Lu, and Jiayan.

109).

II. Conclusion

Watching Bruce Lee movies always has kinds of levels of appreciation. Though some of

the viewers are looking for the authentic martial abilities, there are others who have anticipated

visceral and visual excitements. Nevertheless, this research study proposes that Bruce Lee’s

sophisticated description of the martial rats in the movies encourages spectators to consider the

beauty of the endless change and subsequently learn the cultivation of the Daoist tranquility

during the periods o crises and conflicts.

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Works Cuted

Barrowman, Kyle. Bruce Lee: Authorship, ideology, and film studies. Offscreen, 2012, 16(6).

Retrieved from https://offscreen.com/view/bruce_lee_authorship_part_1

Puett, J. Michael. To become a god: Cosmology, sacrifice, and self-divinization in early China.

Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002.

Little, John. The warrior within: The philosophies of Bruce Lee. New York, NY: Chartwell

Books, 2016.

Lu, H. Sheldon and Jiayan. Mi (Eds.), Chinese ecocinema: In the age of environmental challenge

(pp. 95–112). Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2009.