It’s no exaggeration to say I have been waiting my whole life for a book like Paul Bowman’s Theorizing Bruce Lee: Film-Fantasy-Fighting-Philosophy. Bowman is a professor of cultural studies at Cardiff University. His other books include Post-Marxism versus Cultural Studies (2007) and Deconstructing Popular Culture (2008). As for Theorizing Bruce Lee, any volume that so deftly integrates “Kung Fu Fighting” and Jacques Derrida into an analysis of Bruce Lee scores bonus points with me, but Bowman’s book is easily the most intelligent writing about Lee I’ve ever encountered.
Of course, I graduated from UCLA with a degree in communications studies so the academic analysis is right up my alley—but almost all of the major points he brings up in this book resonated with me on a very, very personal level. Pop culture has reduced Bruce Lee to a kitsch figure or a fetishistic symbol of all that is exotic from “the Orient”. Martial artists either place him on a pedestal of martial arts perfection or disrespectfully dismiss him based on misinformation. And academia has largely ignored him despite his enormous global presence in the media and pop culture.
Bowman, on the other hand, approaches Lee on an entirely different plane. He embraces Lee in all his glorious complexity, placing him properly in the context of the 1960’s. In addition to historical context, Bowman integrates such disparate elements as an objective (as much as that is possible) look at Bruce Lee’s martial arts ability, the history of Western appropriation and Westernization of the martial arts, removal of the lethal elements of martial arts in favor of sport, the psychoanalyzable aspects of the martial arts (including in Bowman’s words, “masculine desire, fantasy, fear, cultural projections.”), and cultural and media studies analysis. As Bowman says in the introduction, “This is going to be messy.”
Bowman has told me that his initial attempts to study Bruce Lee from an academic standpoint were not taken seriously and that he still sometimes receives the same response. This is hard to believe and more than a little unsettling when you consider there hadn’t—and hasn’t since—been an Asian American actor to achieve the same towering popularity in not only mainstream American media, but on a worldwide level as well. No one even comes close. So simply put, Bruce just doesn’t get the respect he deserves.
If you are coming to this post via my site or just a general interest in the martial arts, of particular interest is the very issue of whether or not JKD is a style. I have argued for years that to preserve the teachings of Bruce Lee, there must be some basic elements fundamental to the study of JKD. That’s a style. Otherwise, there would be nothing to teach! And then what’s the point of slapping a name on it? This is my issue with the JKD Concepts approach. If you are just mixing styles, it really has nothing to do with Bruce Lee. Why put his name on it? Why not just say you study martial arts in general? And Bowman argues in this book that even defining the term “martial art” is fraught with complexity. Of course, even if you come to the conclusion that JKD is a style, defining it is a matter of endless debate, too.
For all who argue that JKD is not a style, however, consider this from Bowman:
“The mistake that Bruce Lee made was to believe that what he constructed actually succeeded in going ‘directly’ and ‘immediately to the heart of things’. That is, Lee too (like Zizek) falls into the trap of believing that his own constructions are ‘objective’, free from ‘institution’, free from belief, from theory, from myth and fiction—as if simply ‘true’. But there is no getting away from the contingency of institution, the contingency of culture. Everything is instituted. And institutions are consequential…The ‘event’ of Bruce Lee was clearly not simple. Perhaps not ‘deep’ or ‘enigmatic’ in any romantic sense, it was nevertheless multiple and complex, simultaneously mythic and real, both theoretical and practical, equally imaginary and institutional. So vis-à-vis the martial arts and questions of cultural knowledge more widely, what is clear is that the approach must always be supplemented with the awareness that an institution…is not merely a few walls or some outer structures surrounding, protecting, guaranteeing or restricting the freedom of our work; it is also and already the structure of our interpretation’ (Derrida 1992:22-3). So the question will always remain: what’s your style?
This should be required reading for anyone asking the question, “What is JKD?” First we must understand the question before we can provide the answer.
Whether you are a JKD practitioner, martial arts enthusiast, media studies academic, philosophy student, or just a fan of Bruce Lee, Theorizing Bruce Lee is a brilliant work and a must-read to better understand the man and his place in history on so many levels and across so many disciplines. Respectful, but challenging, Bowman’s work will leave you with a lifetime’s worth to ponder and debate.
