Mythologies of Martial Arts (Martial Arts Studies)

Mythologies of Martial Arts (Martial Arts Studies)

What do martial arts signify today? What do they mean for East-West cross cultural exchanges? How does the representation of martial arts in popular culture impact on the wide world? What is authentic practice? What does it all mean? From Kung Fu to Jiujitsu and from Bruce Lee to The Karate Kid, Mythologies of Martial Arts explores the key myths and ideologies in martial arts in contemporary popular culture. The book combines the author’s practical, professional and academic experience of martial arts to offer new insights into this complex, contradictory world. Inspired by the work of Roland Barthes in Mythologies, the book focusses on the signs, signifiers and practices of martial arts globally. Bringing together cultural studies, film studies, media studies, postcolonial studies with the emerging field of martial arts studies the book explores the broader significance of martial arts in global culture. Using an accessible yet theoretically sophisticated style the book is ideal for students, scholars and anyone interested in any type of martial art. “Bowman provides a fascinating insight for those interested in cultural studies to begin thinking about how martial arts in general have been situated in American society.... Bowman masterfully enters this discussion, raising much needed debate, and doing it in a way that demands readers be serious about the field of cultural studies. Dividing the book into separate chapters, all of which deal with a specific set of questions, documents, and arguments, this text would fit well into any advanced graduate reading seminar, either as a complete text or with select chapters serving as standalone essays. Likewise, this work is bound to raise the interest of cultural studies scholars as treats its subject with intelligence, and focus. One can hardly ask for anything more when reading a book.” ― Sport in American History “Professor Paul Bowman’s latest book sets a new standard for exploring the cultural, sociological and ideological criticism of the martial arts within modern society.” ― Chinese Martial Arts Studies “This wide-ranging, provocative, and entertaining collection of essays should interest all thoughtful martial artists. Whether exploring the phenomenology of kicking, legends surrounding Bruce Lee, machismo and sexism in martial arts culture, or debates over “traditional” vs. “realistic” approaches to fighting, Bowman prompts us to let down our guard and to interrogate the myriad mythologies that inform the martial arts world.” ―Michael Molasky, Professor of Asian Cultural Studies, Waseda University, Tokyo “Addressed to academics and martial artists alike, Bowman’s Mythologies of Martial Arts offers a series of lively and accessible but incisive, surprising, and always provocative analyses of the martial arts and their cultural significance. Bowman challenges received thinking in all its guises, in a must-read book for anyone intellectually serious about the martial arts.” ―Luke White, Senior Lecturer in Visual Culture and Fine Art, Middlesex University, UK “Following in the spirit of Roland Barthes’ Mythologies (1957), Paul Bowman has set a new standard for the exploration of cultural, social and ideological criticism within martial arts studies. Whether investigating the intricacies of history, identity or humor, each chapter sheds much needed light on the global appeal of these fighting systems. Accessible yet profound in turns, this work is sure to be a classic.” ―Benjamin N. Judkins, co-editor of the journal Martial Arts Studies (Cardiff University Press) PAUL BOWMAN is Senior Lecturer in Cultural Studies at Cardiff University, UK. Mythologies of Martial Arts By Paul Bowman Rowman & Littlefield International, Ltd. Copyright © 2017 Paul Bowman All rights reserved. ISBN: 978-1-78660-192-6 Contents Acknowledgements, Introduction, 1 Wrestling Myth, 2 The Status of Martial Arts in the West: From the Kung Fu Craze to Master Ken, 3 Cross-Cultural Desire in Western Eastern Martial Arts, 4 The Circulation of Qi (in Media and Culture), 5 Myths of Martial Arts History, Authority, and Authenticity, 6 On Kicking, Kung Fu, and Knowing Your Lineage, 7 Enter the Ethnicity, 8 The Gender of Martial Arts Studies, 9 Everybody Was Action Film Fighting, 10 From Weird to Wonderful and Back Again, 11 Martial Arts Myth Today, References, Index, About the Author, CHAPTER 1 Wrestling Myth Roland Barthes (1993) begins his groundbreaking 1957 book, Mythologies, with an essay called 'The World of Wrestling'. In this essay, Barthes does not discuss 'college wrestling', Olympic Wrestling, Greco-Roman wrestling, or indeed any other kind of sport, competitive, self-defence, or martial art style of grappling. Rather, he focuses on the spectacular, dramatised, and ultimately choreographed type of 'show wrestling' that was hugely popular in Paris and other cities in the mid-twentieth century – a type of 'wrestling' that was in fact