Fighting without fighting: Kung Fu cinema's journey to the West

White, Luke ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7080-7243 (2022) Fighting without fighting: Kung Fu cinema's journey to the West. Reaktion Books, London. ISBN 9781789145335. [Book] (Accepted/In press)

Abstract

Fighting without Fighting explores the history and ongoing cultural significance of the "kung fu craze" which swept America, Europe and the World in 1973–4. I contextualise this within the longer development of martial arts cinema in China and Hong Kong, and also within the changing social and cultural landscape of America and "The West." In this, the martial arts – and ideas or images of Asia more generally – were involved in a transformation of ideas about identity and politics at a moment of rapid globalisation. Chapters explore the significance of martial arts cinema in imagining race and gender, highlighting the impact of martial arts iconographies on Black American popular culture and the appropriation of kung fu cinema's images of "women warriors" by feminists, as well as exploring the development of "homegrown" white, male martial arts stars in Hollywood film.

The book not only examines the unfolding history of kung fu but explores its continuing significance across a range of media and cultural sites, in the cinema and beyond.

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