by Neil Vodavzny

The 1982 classic film Shaolin Temple was underwritten by the Peoples Republic of China but made by Hong Kong, since Chinese tradition is mainly honoured in HK or Japanese films rather than mainland travesties. It’s good for the way Buddhist monks make a play of being of peaceful spirit while beating the bejesus out of deserving warlords. The land of the rising sun is a curious amalgam of cute robots with sensual ceremonies at time-lost shrines. Stirring vistas are as integral to the folk-landscape as they ever were, partly owing to much of the land being uninhabitable.

The fact that Japanese pop-culture has mastered the art of sophisticated cuteness shouldn’t blind us to its traditional tropes. Nippon is a land of contrasts: the nerd-infested fads of teens seeking like-minded souls; and the never-changing warrior ethos. Cult-anime Evangelion is one of the most extraordinary examples: a positively baroque storyline impossible to summarise here (children of Adam are varieties of Angels, battled by mechas piloted by angst-ridden teens). The fusion of east and west continues in the music.

Another strand is gender fluidity, even taking the form of fashion . You see it a lot in action and historical films too. I suspect it’s because, historically, women were capable sword and staff fighters. The 1970s TV series The Water Margin, set in the Song Dynasty but made in Japan, is a classic example.

Now, here’s a neat link! Grace Slick writes of the easy going joints of the San Fran scene

A girl in full Renaissance drag is spinning around by herself listening to some Baroque music in her head, while several people in jeans and American Indian headbands are sitting in a circle smoking weed.
- Somebody To Love? 1990

65 Cali was a sort of fusion of old West and old Europe with East Indian yogi, Japanese art, art deco posters. Slick came from a completely conventional, right-wing 50s, a bit like Joplin, and spontaneously metamorphosed into an easy love peacenik. So far so rebellious, but her right-wing credentials are still detectable in her love of guns (Lawman) and rural pursuits. She even cites the Puritan sensibility of “Don’t you want somebody to love?” – it’s better to give than to receive. Eventually, I suppose, the hippy colonies dissolved into the family as a more logical unit, so you end up with the usual lineage and dynasty (China Wing Kantner).

The infatuation with the East is an interesting fusion, mirrored in the Western tendencies of kung fu and Japanese anime – and Samurai: The Seven Samurai is a type of Western which improves on John Ford. The big problem with the hippies is their free-loving ethos dissolves in acrimony: they like the East’s esotericism, not its discipline. If you were to inject a little discipline into the hippy mode, you would get something much more suited to a HK kung fu movie! There’s a type of freedom of bodily expression in both cases.

Hong Kong kung fu films are theatrical, their stars are skilled practitioners, but they accentuate the high flying acrobatics with the now ubiquitous wires. Nevertheless, it’s the genuine skill which is most impressive. Have a look at the super speed and grace of a champion in action:

The physical discipline of kung fu allows characters to direct emotion tellingly – in their stances, in their controlled outbursts. In Once Upon A Time In China, 19th century folk-hero Wong Fe Hung honours the tradition, even submitting to arrest according to Chinese law, and countenancing action only when directly threatened. He thereby acts as an effective symbol of the old country. His physical aspect is commanding and his moral impeccable.

HK films are malevolent and theatrical, or comedic and ludicrous to the nth degree, but they do not fall into the western trap of portentious pedantry (the likes of Nolan’s Interstellar yawnathon). They have a moral human spirit and physical dimension which breaths life into turgid historical drama. In a semi-similar fashion, Bollywood accentuates traditional Indian aspects, imparting a story through human spirit and gaiety. Both these traditions fulfil a physical and moral dimension sorely lacking in the West. Batman tries his best, though I have to admit to a fondness for the old Adam West TV campness.

This form of physical infused with moral storytelling is a sign of a harmonious order. HK and India have all this at the time of writing – HK is teetering on the abyss as we speak. By “harmonious” I don’t mean lack of conflict, quite the opposite. In fact, in Swordsman 2 sexual conflict is a big part of the story.

Swordsman 2 with Jet Li and Brigitte Lin features a clan of uplanders who cohabit as a brotherhood, and there is some typically crude body-centric language (the same applies to the Chinese story on which Water Margin is based). Prowess with the sword is a badge of status; you want strong women, you got ‘em. Villain Lin becomes a eunuch and gains supernatural powers. Ambiguous sexuality in my view is quite an old Western tradition too. The thing about the Ouji (prince) craze is it is inspired by a time when men dressed more effeminately (men in tights, red Indian headdresses).

The sexualisation of women in our culture by contrast is overwhelmingly negative, something like the male-oriented fixation of Stepford Wives; the female body as a techno-centric dead-end. The Eastern way is a much more physical, body-centred romance, so that the woman, as in Michelle Yeoh’s films, is a balletic specimen of grace and power. Women in the middle-ages and Renaissance art were deployed to great effect as physical specimens, obviously.

The East is therefore less male-oriented and less enslaved to male techno-fetishism. Now, I should discount mainland China, since the “real” China is elsewhere. The idea of recognizing contrasts in sexes, not in a highly sexualised sense, but as a physical reality which has historical antecedents, and is thereby a form of escape from male enslavement. Techno-centric slavery of social-media is the best case-in-point. It’s literally run by “servers”, the clients are “slaved” to eachother in an arbitrary fashion. The entire culture of social-media is a form of male-oriented techno-slavery! Ask Jennifer Lawrence.

I suggest this points the way to a physical reality which is somewhat akin to the you see in Brueghel. There is a camaraderie between men and women which is not overly sexualised but has a crudity and coarseness. Actually, that type of thing is not so far removed from the old West, so we’re back with the hippies!

Is the Pope a hippy? I noticed him using the language of pop-culture to proclaim that Europe’s era of philosophy and “great ideas” has been replaced by the “bureaucratic technicalities” of European Union institutions. In a blistering broadside, he intones:

“The true strength of our democracies – understood as expressions of the political will of the people – must not be allowed to collapse under the pressure of multinational interests which are not universal, which weaken them and turn them into uniform systems of economic power at the service of unseen empires.”

This will come as a shock, but a revival of Christendom could be a novel way forward. There is no ethos in the Western world when we cannot support HK for fear of Chinese reprisals (on our wallets).