by Neil Vodavzny

Chinese folk-hero Wong Fei Hung has been portrayed in countless Hong Kong Kung Fu movies as the staunch defender of national characteristics against western invaders. Some people have a habit of rolling their eyes and saying, “oh, kung fu”, in that way. In fact, on the Once Upon A Time In China DVD, one commentator Mark King, who was in the film as a western infidel, was such a downer that he admitted he was just in it for the money. There are people like that (called capitalists usually) but, since he’s a long-time HK resident, I’ll let him off.

OUATIC is nothing like OUATIA – one of the dullest epics ever made – and I’ll tell you why. The physical discipline of the hero is as much a part of his moral code. In Once Upon A Time In China Wong battles the treacherous Iron Robe and is cut by a blade hidden in the queue. Wong is outraged and in a furious sequence throws the hidden dagger through two hoops – a symbolic gesture. The next scene is equally telling, the treacherous Iron Robe dying in a hail of western bullets, his disciple crying, “Kung Fu is no match for western guns”.

This film – in fact the whole OUATIC series – is famed for its historical context. The Chinese fighting amongst themselves and the nefarious westerners recruiting allies amongst the triads. Wong symbolises not just the physical strength of a master, but the inner struggle for identity in a world of steel and powder. One commentator cited the interesting historical footnote that Japan outlawed gunpowder for 30 years as the Emperor knew it would signal the end of the Samurai chivalric code.

The idea of physical presence symbolising a moral has gone out of fashion in the West, but it is surely the essence of a non-Cartesian world. We can learn from HK, which epitomises a Chinese tradition the commies have crushed (though Jet Li was born in Beijing). The West always learnt from the East because we have a historical tendency to a Minotaur-like ideological maze. Think only of the excruciating mental gymnastics of latter-day alchemy. Small wonder Galileo had an easy time – I mean, apart from the Inquisition.

Here in the bit on Chinese herbalism, there’s a comment to the effect that the Chinese five elements are an interpretation of symbolic reality. The herbalist then interprets the interpretation more minutely. The Western tradition has 4 elements, and there is a sense in which any symbolic interpretation has an element of nonsense – of the unknowable. Each interpretation, as with Amerindians, is valid but different.

Science cannot handle that; there has to be one reality. But that is exactly the way religions work; medieval Christianity is an interpretation of symbolic reality. Because there is an element of the unknowable – the crux of the belief – there is room for manoeuvre in interpreting the interpretation. You get orders which are completely distinctive. The idea of sectarianism depends on an element of the unknowable, or a type of nonsense.

By nonsense I mean something that cannot be interpreted because reality in its primeval essence is unknowable; we interpret it through symbols. This is an Eastern way of thought, but also one common to Christendom. Dionysic rituals come into play in the Chinese lion dance , and also in Spain’s carnivalesque parades. These are celebrations of primal energy, fierceness and passion. Every story has a symbolism and, while Christianity has been historically more literalist, the same is true of its orders, fraternities and rituals.

The Greek ideal, with its taut, visionary energy - epitomised in the passionate artifice of drama in vast amphitheatres - has a type of parallel in these playful festivities. As we know, the Western world has a tendency to literalism which eventually culminated in the scientific revolution, and the scientific frame of mind is nicely put in a quote by Robert A Heinlein:

One can judge from experiment, or one can blindly accept authority. To the scientific mind, experimental proof is all important and theory is merely a convenience in description, to be junked when it no longer fits ...

This sort of view might go down well with the European Space Agency, which recently landed the probe Philae on a comet with pinpoint accuracy (bar a mile-high hop!). Consider this, though; what if Philae finds amino-acids and nucleic acids buried in the ice? Comets could then be proven to be the water-bearing seeds of life that brought organic molecules to primeval Earth. Inscriptions from the cosmos.

Comets in Eastern and Western myth are also known as legendary forces, often inauspicious. In ancient Greece they would be viewed as living entities streaking through the night skies, bearing tidings of some weight on the affairs of mortals. In other words, what you have is not just techne, but techne linked with legend. Legend is to do with the very structure of the universe.

Legend is an emotional response to the world of the senses and, again, science can’t handle emotion. But emotion itself is a facet of opposite tendencies; love, hate, life, death.

The structure of the universe, as portrayed in legend, brings to life these primeval tendencies. In the narrative of Titian’s Diana & Actaeon (see prev), the hunter encounters the huntress. The change of mood through the triad turns around the initial image of the hunter, so that in the final image Actaeon is prey for the hounds of Diana, metamorphosing into a stag.

Naturalistic legend contains the ingredients of narrative and you could assume the world in its primeval state has a narrative. Here’s an image by Norwegian romantic Peder Balke:

The pared-down symmetry and standout motifs are quite reminiscent of Chinese landscape painting.

Techne as it stands in the scientific age has become an end in itself, shortcutting the imaginative response to nature which, as can be seen from the images, has a moral force or grandeur.

Eastern practices, being more concerned with physical harmony, relate Man to a natural order, applying techne in a specific, accurate and non-dogmatic way according to a symbolic interpretation of nature. This symbolic interpretation contains elements of the unknown.

There’s a scene in Once Upon A Time In China 2 which is pretty accurate. The sequel to OUATIC is set during Sun Yat Sen’s rebellion and features the xenophobic White Lotus Sect; westerners caught up in the turmoil require medical aid which is a mix of western with Wong’s (Jet Li) traditional acupuncture. There’s a scene where Wong demonstrates the skill by inserting needles which numb the knee so that there’s no reflex, which suitably impresses the western doctors.

In the scene, the western doctor demonstrates reflex by tapping the knee; western experiment doesn’t deny the harmonious system of acupuncture, which works on the principle of 5 organs and pressure points in the nervous system. Experiment per se is nothing to do with harmony and so, over time, can degrade any system. The East, by putting harmony forefront, doesn’t just treat the body as some mindless instrument (in the same spirit, I noticed Modi has appointed an Indian minister for yoga, seeing as he’s a thoroughgoing Hindu.)

So, eastern practices are symbolic representations of a reality which is always unknowable in its essence. Man has to try to master it to the best he/she is capable. Experiment, as I’ve tried to indicate here, shortcircuits the imaginative response to nature. That response has to be symbolic because nature is unknowable in its essence (Douglas Adams’ Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy pokes fun at that Western folly in the billion year experiment to answer the ultimate question).

The OUATIC series is a pretty cool cultural history of China’s exposure to Western techno-advances eclipsing their dominance of east asia. It’s a sort of melange of energetic ensemble scenes with playful emotions. Folk-hero Wong Fei Hung is depicted as a very direct character with very little subtlety in the emotional department. For a heroic warrior probably accurate enough. The area where it greatly differs from Western period drama is in this seductive blend of playful energy.

I would say the acting style (Jet Li, Rosamund Kwan as Yee) is just enough, without the overwrought intensity of western stars. In fact, the films are dubbed into Cantonese to render them accessible, and the script altered on the hoof by director Tsui Hark. This reminded me of Jean-Luc Godard’s mode of working. For him, a film is a battle where there are no casualties, and you are up against the elements of the moment. Hark has a similar quote that direction (of story) is everything, and injecting a spark of energy is one of his main aims.

To Godard, legend is forever present – especially in his retelling of The Odyssey, Le Mepris. You see it in the rocks, sea, Mediterranean sky and classic statues of Capri, in the scowling Bardot and hapless Paul. Hark has a way of contouring a story through conflicting ingredients – gangs, triads, western powers, revolutionaries – making use of the geography of the picturesque townscape (steam engines etc.) In such scenes, Wong acts with honour but not always judiciously. He is caught up in events as a representative of ancient Chinese codes.

This strikes me as a non-literalist way to history; Wong’s nobility is legendary and largely made up, since so little is known of the historical character. Godard has a somewhat similar idea of telling a scene from different perspectives, even shooting the same take from various viewpoints. The conclusion is there is no one version of reality.

The point I would make is they are both classical modes of storytelling. There is a playful element which literally plays with emotional truth; and there is a current of energy with legendary pretentions. To me, that is the Greek ideal because truth is not something to be grasped. It has to be a creative act of high drama.

We in the modern west are generally not aware of the communal aspect of classical Greece since, after all, we see only ruins. Or, to be more precise, we pay lip service to the Olympic Games and drama, but not to the communal energy they represent.

The exhilarating power of Mycenaean/Minoan culture is its gaiety and kinetic energy. Bull-dancing was a Minoan festival which possibly is the forerunner of the Spanish more bloodthirsty tradition. That is the communal life, but it also applies to the legends they wrote in the sky and seas of the Mediterranean.
One should recall that in Shakespeare’s day The Globe was a type of rough entertainment for all modes of life, and similar remarks applied to Italian opera. In a similar way, the HK film industry was built as a successful commercial entertainment first, art second. As Hark says, films are a type of game, and you try to inject some quality.

Exactly what quality is is very difficult to say; but from a classical point of view, it just happens. There’s a limit to the amount of forethought you can do because the energy dissipates. Godard may not think of himself as a commercial director (even though he admires American genre of the 50s) but in that classical spirit I’d say he is, without the Faustian pact of selling his talent to the highest bidder.

This is society as a state of being rather than an exercise in social experiment and material progress. Going back to Heinlein’s quote (part 1), the Greeks excelled at hypotheses and the likes of Pythagoras had a mystical attitude to numerology. Greek science never developed the experimental method as empiricism, and this is where one can spy a connection between classicism and the dreaming skies of the East. Greek civilization lived in the presence of mythos, and prized “the taut string that sounds the true note”.

This type of thing is as intangible as time. A playful energy that permeates the cosmos. A donkey’s bray, clowns in a circus, Chinese acrobats, Abba’s music, Jefferson Airplane live at Woodstock, Starlin’s iconoclasm bouncing off his Catholicism. One is aware of a type of nonsense & soul-energy that frees one from the messed-up world (paraphrasing Supertramp and Sandi Thom).

If we, as European Right, value the classical world, we need a certain steely integrity. Without being in the slightest hermetic, we should go out to where the wild things are. What we are seeking is not a tangible product; it’s the seasons and skies, even the trail of a comet. Something timeless and direct, with no mediation, that makes European as opposed to oriental.

The Western temperament is more literalist; the Eastern one more superstitious, organic and harmonic all together (lion and dragon rituals). In OUATIC 3, Wong has an interesting reaction on confronting the Russian Tomatovsky’s advocation of the era of steam-power – “We’ll see if machines or humans have the last word” – as the idealised representative of philosophical strength with justice. Meaning Western technology usurping dynastic rule (of the Manchus). That battle is still going on. The scene is shot with Frankenstein-ish lighting and lightning, the Russian framed by the power of the engine – one of several interesting symbols used in the film (like the Chinese etiquette of conflict, the empty cup, etc). The final acrobatic scene of the Lion Dance fight could be likened to Cirque de Soleil performance art.

Things are different just because they are; east is east and west is west. In a direct, open response to nature, cultural differences are exposed to the light of day. By going East, we just recognize our true selves, temperaments, sensibilities. Likewise, going to Chinatown San Fran is more real than Beijing.

European artifice is represented in Ibsen’s refined psycho-dramas of 19th century industrial society, fraught and familial. An interesting comparison is with Wong’s 13th aunt (Yee): traditional etiquette dictates their formal relationship. A nice motif running through the films, till love blossoms in OUATIC 3, sort of signifying partial collapse of the old order of the feudal system in the face of Western industry. These open-handed dramas are a product of the European drama – of the natural romance of its fiords, alps, Mediterranean seas. As Swedish dramatic soprano Nina Stemme says, “I have no interest in being a media product. I am not sacrificing my artistic freedom”. In other words, she will not do crossover work to appeal to the masses. No compromise, to quote Rorschach. She does classical opera, she’s the best there is. Actually, she relaxes with Jacques Brel, so it’s not a type of snobbery. She’s a traditionalist, as should we be.

Being traditional brings in factors such as race, origin and folklore. This in turn relates to a rural, athletic, egalitarian order which a future Europe of the Right should take account of; a physical reality which lies at the root of classical civilization. It’s not snobbery – or, at least, it has elements both of crudity and elitism. It’s not the material world, because the material world doesn’t value the classical, the direct response to nature. The classical cannot be forethought because it’s not a tangible product. It just is.

The material world is ever more enslaved to male techno-fetishism (of women). This western mode is avidly spreading, so that China happily levels mountains to pave the way for a 1,000 km cyber-route. That’s what I mean by going East via the ancient silk-route, because the world is effectively western, recapturing, as the pope recently opined, the philosophical spirit of Europe. It’s not as easy a case as recapturing a genetic heritage; it’s recapturing the drama of the European journey.

Liberals, of course, don’t get this atall – and this is where I’ll make a hypothesis! The type of work nowadays which is increasingly tied to social-media (Facebook is invading office-space) literally dulls the brain to the point that it tends not to factor-in the struggle for existence (basically as represented by mythos or religion). Anything that hints at toughness they tend to be clueless about. In other words, the actual state of being that is observable in, say, a grouse moor, is not apparent.

Yet that is how Man the hunter became Man the cultivator, citizen and patriot. This quote by artist Patrick Woodroffe (prev) is apt: “the best heroes, though strong and ruthless, usually have a subsidiary gentleness built in”. So, the liberalising of social-media goes hand-in-hand with a delusional state of liberal mindset. A grouse moor which illustrates a life of iconic meaning implicating predator and prey, hunter and hound, is a foreign land.

Social-media is the latest chapter in the saga of paving over body and soul with infrastructure. The drama of life’s journey is lost to a soulless enterprise, the liberal secular mindset cannot understand the need for drama, conflict, hunter and hound, pursuit. If you don’t believe that, then you are a materialist and follow the paved-over road to perdition (not quite Oz). That’s why the Right might embrace a spirit-road, in that capital follows the other one. Marine le Pen and Bardot are better saviours than Sarkozy. So, for those who say Judeo-Christianity is suspect, I say all religions are, because they cannot be explained adequately.

The conception that Christianity intrinsically leads to liberalism – and some say to scientism – is interesting, but inconclusive. Christendom was an era of numerous orders and sects, towns and patron saints.. all interpretations in some distinctive, ornate, ritualistic way of doctrine. If you can say a mystery lies at the heart of Christian Faith, then the same goes for other previous and related ones, such as Mithraism (as I believe was noted regarding Rome previously?) Mithra was the Zoroastrian deity of covenant and oath, on the understanding that the drama of heart and soul is supported by the divinity. Religious rites symbolise a reality which is in essence unknowable, and bound to body and soul.

If you say there is no mystery, then you’re a materialist – all religions believe in mystery. It’s the freedom derived from belief, freedom from all isms that seek to rationalise existence as something else, namely material. Others may have put it better – GK Chesterton, the dread CS Lewis. Liberal secular nihilism versus motifs of tradition and nature, meaningful stasis, strength in justice.