2008-06-10 Clowntime is over...

In a recent article for The Daily Mirror Tony Parson's wrote that "not all the Chinese have a stake in the country's new found prosperity but every single one of them has a stake in the Beijing Olympics". A cursory glance in the year-view mirror reminds us that, up until these last few post-empire decades, the Chinese, viewed through these now dimming lens of colonialism, were rendered a nation of waiters, laundry workers and villains; so it's hardly surprising that this global scale event should be embraced so passionately with a view of saying to the world "Look how far we've come." But the true genesis of this particular brand of pan-cultural re-calibration had already taken place back in 1971 with a movie called Tang Shan Da Xiong (The Big Boss) and an actor called Bruce Lee.

To describe Lee as a cultural phenomenon is an understatement and inevitably legends are built on myths which grow more fantastic with every telling. His four completed works defined martial arts movies for all time and his unfinished opus Game of Death is basically the template for computer gaming which now, of course, informs much of modern action movie making; add `visionary innovator' to Lee's curriculum vitae.

This oft maligned icon has suffered much in death but has been redeemed somewhat by the sober and highly respectful biography `Fighting Spirit' from Bruce Thomas who is perhaps better known as the geeky and underrated bass player with Elvis Costello's Attractions. Thomas, as it turns out, is also a disciple of Lee's own fluid style of Kung Fu known as Jeet Kun Do (Way of the Intercepting fist) - clearly not a geek to be messed with.
Thomas' Fighting Spirit is the story of Siu Lung (Little Dragon) and his metamorphosis from child actor to teenage hoodlum; from martial artist to international superstar and media martyrdom at thirty two. It deals extensively with Lee's personal philosophy and the constant evolution of his art - and on reading Fighting Spirit you do come to appreciate that beyond the `chop socky' conventions of the movies which defines the form - Kung Fu is indeed an art.
Chapters examining Lee's philosophy inevitably verge into `ah Grasshopper' territory; "Empty your mind, be formless. Shapeless, like water. If you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup. You put water into a bottle and it becomes the bottle. You put it in a teapot it becomes the teapot. Now, water can flow or it can crash. Be water my friend." But much of Lee's impish humour comes through with the no less insightful "A punch in the mouth is a punch in the mouth."

As much as that now iconic image back in `89 of a lone student hindering the progress of a tank in Tinneman Square, the mise-en-scene that we most associate with China is Bruce Lee streaked with blood in a hall of mirrors from Enter the Dragon. As the political sturm und drang of the Tibetan conflict threaten to engulf the event, Parson's assertion that Olympiad 2008 is a demonstration of national pride and a chance to say to the world "You can't look down on us anymore" - the fact of the matter is - the world hasn't looked down on China since Bruce Lee.