Martial Arts as Embodied Knowledge: Asian Traditions in a Transnational World

4. Body, Masculinity, and Representation in Chinese Martial Arts Films

4 Body, Masculinity, and Representation in Chinese Martial Arts Films Jie Lu This essay seeks to study alternative representations of masculinity in the globalized Chinese martial art film. This is exemplified by Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, a wuxia film (sword-fighting martial arts genre) directed by Ang Lee in 2000. This film typifies a focus on the body as a cultural site for representing nonhegemonic Chinese masculinities. It is also a locale for cultural crossover, transgression, and contention. The study of this film will be situated within two contexts: the traditional Chinese conception of the body in constructing masculinities and its modern transformation as represented in Chinese martial arts films. As a discursive site, the body is inscribed by sociocultural changes, global influences, and traditional cultural sediments, and registers cultural/moral ambiguities/anxieties and even nationalist contentions. In a broader sense, the trajectory of the body from traditional invisibility to postmodern spectacular presentations is an integral part of the historical transformation of China to a modern state. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon is a transitional and “flexible production ” made possible by Hollywood capital, a pan-Asian star cast, and a well-known international team. A spectacular and exquisite epic, the film has both legitimized and globalized the wuxia genre of martial arts film as bona fide cinema. Its representation of the mythic past, locating imperial China and its cultural imagery within unspecified temporal and spatial configurations of China’s last dynasty, constitutes a deterritorialized 97 98 Martial Arts as Embodied Knowledge pan-Chinese identity with broad appeal to the Chinese diaspora. Its breathtaking scenery, “cyber Beijing,” and cultural references recreate the long-lost glory of ancient China as well as a fantastic and imaginary world of martial arts (Lo 2005: 181). However, there is a profound incongruity between the spectacular epic story genre and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon’s nonheroic heroes. The general critical view has been that the film, utilizing the wuxia genre as a form of “mythic remembrance” for the diaspora and an imaginary expression of Chinese culture together with the grand scenery and cultural settings, generates an idealized Chinese cultural identification (Lo 2005: 181). On the other hand, its character portrayals reflect cultural ambiguities toward the body. This ambivalent representation of the body opens up new masculine imaginings and possibilities. An outline of Chinese conceptual changes regarding the body and their relations to cultural/ filmic representation is a necessary prelude to a fresh reading of this film that takes male gender roles seriously. From Hidden to Revealed: Body and Masculinity in Chinese Sociohistorical and Cultural Contexts Masculinity in the Chinese sociocultural context necessarily raises issues of body and gender. As others have recently argued, the male/female bodily distinction that has formed the fundamental principle in Western symbolic systems does not explain Chinese gender construction and symbolism. Viewed from traditional Chinese cosmology, gender constructs sex, instead of the other way around (Brownell and Wasserstrom 2002: 26). The representation of “woman” as defined by inborn biological functions did not exist in premodern China and has been borrowed from the West (Rosenlee 2006: 45). The body is absent from traditional Chinese thinking as well as gender construction. The significance of the body in social and cultural life in general has emerged recently as a result of the rise of medical science, intellectual paradigm shifts, and social and political changes. Yet, viewed historically, the body has been, according to Bryan Turner (1984: 8), “the most elusive, illusory . . . metaphorical and ever distant thing.” In traditional Western thought, several traditions contribute to the ubiquitous yet elusive status of the body. The Greek negative view was grounded in the inferiority of the body to the soul. Christianity identified the body as the locale of sin. 99 Body, Masculinity, and Representation Cartesian dualism distinguished between mind and body and, privileging the former over the latter, favored a disembodied rational subject. The Enlightenment tradition devalued the body and desire as the foundation for action while the “Protestant ethic” subjected bodily pleasure to work ethics in order to inculcate discipline and high achievement in the individual. These Western dualist paradigms all view the body and soul/mind as discrete entities and result in a conception of the body as underdetermined, devalued, and denigrated. Western feminists argue that this dualism also forms the foundation for gender inequality by relegating women to the domain of nature—the lower part of this hierarchy. Femininity is associated with body...