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In the spring and summer of 1973, a wave of martial arts movies
from Hong Kong - epitomized by Bruce Lee's Enter the Dragon -
smashed box-office records for foreign-language films in America,
and ignited a 'kung fu craze' that swept the world. Fighting
without Fighting explores this dramatic phenomenon, and argues
that, more than just a cinematic fad, the West's sudden fascination
with - and moral panic about - the Asian fighting arts has left
lasting legacies into the present. The book traces the background
of the craze in the longer development of Hong Kong's martial arts
cinema. It discusses the key films in detail, as well as their
popular reception and the debates they ignited, where kung fu
challenged Western identities and raised anxieties about violence,
both on and off screen. And it examines the proliferation of ideas
and images from these films in fields as diverse as popular music,
superhero franchises, children's cartoons and contemporary art.
Illuminating and accessible, Fighting without Fighting draws a
vivid bridge between East and West.
In 1978 the films Snake in the Eagle's Shadow and Drunken Master,
both starring a young Jackie Chan, caused a stir in the Hong Kong
cinema industry and changed the landscape of martial arts cinema.
Mixing virtuoso displays of acrobatic kung fu with knockabout humor
to huge box office success, they broke the mold of the tragic and
heroic martial arts film and sparked not only a wave of imitations,
but also a much longer trend for kung fu comedies that continues to
the present day. Legacies of the Drunken Master - the first
book-length analysis of kung fu comedy - interrogates the politics
of the films and their representations of the performing body. It
draws on an interdisciplinary engagement with popular culture and
an interrogation of the critical literature on Hong Kong and
martial arts cinema to offer original readings of key films. These
readings pursue the genre in terms of its carnival aesthetic, the
utopias of the body it envisions, its highly stylized depictions of
violence, its images of masculinity, and the registers of its
"hysterical" laughter. The book's analyses are carried out amidst
kung fu comedy's shifting historical contexts, including the
aftermath of the 1960s radical youth movements, the rapidly
globalizing colonial enclave of Hong Kong and the emerging
consciousness of its 1997 handover to China, and the
transnationalization of cinema audiences. It argues that through
kung fu comedy's images of the body, the genre articulated in
complex and often contradictory ways political realities relevant
to late twentieth-century Hong Kong and the wider conditions of
globalized capitalism. The kung fu comedy entwines us in a popular
cultural history that stretches into the folk past and forward into
utopian and dystopian possibilities. Theoretically rich and
critical, Legacies of the Drunken Master aims to be at the
forefront of scholarship on martial arts cinema. It also addresses
readers with a broader interest in Hong Kong culture and politics
during the 1970s and 1980s, postcolonialism in East Asia, and
action and comedy films in a global context - as well as those
fascinated with the performing body in the martial arts.
In 1978 the films Snake in the Eagle's Shadow and Drunken Master,
both starring a young Jackie Chan, caused a stir in the Hong Kong
cinema industry and changed the landscape of martial arts cinema.
Mixing virtuoso displays of acrobatic kung fu with knockabout humor
to huge box office success, they broke the mold of the tragic and
heroic martial arts film and sparked not only a wave of imitations,
but also a much longer trend for kung fu comedies that continues to
the present day. Legacies of the Drunken Master - the first
book-length analysis of kung fu comedy - interrogates the politics
of the films and their representations of the performing body. It
draws on an interdisciplinary engagement with popular culture and
an interrogation of the critical literature on Hong Kong and
martial arts cinema to offer original readings of key films. These
readings pursue the genre in terms of its carnival aesthetic, the
utopias of the body it envisions, its highly stylized depictions of
violence, its images of masculinity, and the registers of its
""hysterical"" laughter. The book's analyses are carried out amidst
kung fu comedy's shifting historical contexts, including the
aftermath of the 1960s radical youth movements, the rapidly
globalizing colonial enclave of Hong Kong and the emerging
consciousness of its 1997 handover to China, and the
transnationalization of cinema audiences. It argues that through
kung fu comedy's images of the body, the genre articulated in
complex and often contradictory ways political realities relevant
to late twentieth-century Hong Kong and the wider conditions of
globalized capitalism. The kung fu comedy entwines us in a popular
cultural history that stretches into the folk past and forward into
utopian and dystopian possibilities. Theoretically rich and
critical, Legacies of the Drunken Master aims to be at the
forefront of scholarship on martial arts cinema. It also addresses
readers with a broader interest in Hong Kong culture and politics
during the 1970s and 1980s, postcolonialism in East Asia, and
action and comedy films in a global context - as well as those
fascinated with the performing body in the martial arts.
The Sublime has been considered an archaic concept the relevance of
which was limited to eighteenth-century discourses on art, literary
criticism and aesthetics. But it is becoming obvious that
contemporary culture requires of us a response that is at once
emotional, critical, powerful and meaningful, and recently the
issue of the sublime has found its way back onto the critical
agenda. This book asks a series of critical questions about this
resurgence: What is the legacy of the discourse of the sublime for
us today? In what ways has it acquired an added urgency in our new
millennium? To what extent is this concept a useful or dangerous
tool for the understanding of contemporary culture and history? How
does the Sublime follow the Post Modern? To what uses can and
should it be put? Why the Sublime now? The editors have collected
writings from many contemporary thinkers who bring the critical
concept of the sublime into their discussions of contemporary
cultures. Spanning philosophy, religion, ecology, politics,
literature, avant-garde art, popular cinema, comic books, humour
and digital cultures these essays consider the relevance of the
sublime now. The authors make provocative readings of the original
writings on the sublime, from Longinus, Burke, Kant and Nietzsche,
to Freud, Lyotard, Derrida, Kristeva and others whilst bringing
these writings to bear on today's cultural issues.
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