Dragon, the Bruce Lee story

This movie was on last night, based on Linda Lee's book.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon:_The_Bruce_Lee_Story#Production

I've now seen this movie at 3 different stages of my life and it meant something different each time.

When I watched this movie as a child with my mother, it was sort of an introduction to Bruce Lee. Of course I had heard about him but I didn't watch his movies (except Enter the Dragon on tv as it seemed to always be on)  really until High school and College. And of course he was constantly a subject of conversation for both the inner city non-Chinese and the Chinese. And the conversations, rumors, stories were different depending on which race was telling them and the legends were pretty much right up there with the conversations about Freddy Krueger and Bloody Mary. (Maybe that's why their playing this movie near Halloween.) They were about how he died, who was better than who (in terms of Chuck Norris and Bruce) and whose fault it was that he died. Actually these conversations were a lot like the very politically incorrect conversations on the same themes about Jesus.

But the movie meant something different in our family. Mainly my mother kept making comments like, "That's exactly what your dad would say!" or during the kitchen fighting scene, "I remember when they used to fight in the Kitchen all the time and Po would stop them." Anyway My mother was white and was with my dad who was Chinese during a time when this wasn't accepted by everyone. And she recalled walking hand in hand with my father in a supermarket and a black woman exclaiming, "That's disgusting!" Anyway, my mother loved the movie of course. The dramatized demon was scary to me and my mom thought it was weird and maybe inappropriate since we watched the movie on video and by that time Brandon Lee had died on the set of the Crow, making the dramatized scenes that would have seemed over the top and silly, eerily prophetic. The Demon seemed to have gotten the son after all.


Later, as an adolescent, when I started watching Bruce Lee's movies in Chinese and talking to Kung Fu brothers as well as just having other Kung Fu conversations, in Chinese, that movie meant something different again. As a child, it seemed that to everyone Bruce Lee was the perfect role model. Like Martin Luther King. In fact my Black Female second grade teacher actually used a Bruce Lee reference from Enter the Dragon, to explain Martin Luther King's ideas of non-violence. How people who fight didn't fight if they didn't need to.
But as an adolescent I learned more about some character flaws with Bruce in terms of women. (MLK actually had the same flaws) But he also seemed to have been starting fights and trouble all the time according to some people. There some stories in Tibetan White Crane about Bruce having studied the system briefly in Singapore, but to do so having to renounce a Sifu disciple relationship with Ip man. None of this has ever been backed up by any biography I have seen. Except that the Jeet in Jeet Kune Do is one  of the Tibetan white crane's four pillars of martial arts philosophy. And a lot of his classic moves have the look of a crane's wing and his over all strategy at fighting seems to be a lot like Chan Hak Fu's in the fight between him and NG gong Yi. The video of that is all over You Tube as WHite Crane vs. Tai Chi. The fight happened in the 50's and some say sparked the interest in Kung fu and Wuxia that created the later Wuxia craze. (It's just as possible that Bruce just watched a video of that fight over and over rather than receive formal training but in any case that little story has been passed down) So Bruce became less of a role model during this time. But still a point of reference that everyone knew about in Martial Arts. And also still a major figure among other (less famous figures but more important to me) in my pantheon of Kung Fu guys living and deceased who were regularly discussed emulated and in a way, channeled through training.



Last night when I watched the movie, as a stay at home father of two children, a Sifu in my own right, and a guy who has created his own system of teaching, if not training, (I don't have my own school but I have my own shirts and a blog that counts right?) I was back at the beginning with Bruce being the magical hero and I was with Linda Lee all the way. Bruce Lee is now more than the man that he was. he is a symbol internationally. But I'm getting off track.
Linda's version of him is a different focus. It focuses on his family life, and the screen representation of that is going to be very Hollywood, but there are some very important things about these cheesy representations of reality. The first thing is Sex. There are a ton of love scenes between Bruce and Linda. And I remember watching this movie casually on tv with some classmates and a teacher in middle school. The teacher commented that this was pornographic and shouldn't be on tv. The students had no problem with it. At the time I sort of respected where the teacher was coming from. But now I think it is essential that those love scenes are pushed in your face. First of all, there love scenes that you would see in a Woman's movie on Lifetime. There is no pornography, they don't show anything, I watched this movie with my mom as a child. They don't objectify Linda or Bruce the way countless commercials and posters do.
What is uncomfortable to some people about them is the male is Asian and the Female is white. Deny all you want, that's really what it's about and that's why it's so prevalent in the movie, because of that. Watching this movie now you will notice that love scenes between Asian Males and white women's or even kissing scenes, are still very rare in American Films and tv shows. In some of Jet Li's American movies there are women who are interested in him or married to him but is there a lovemaking scene? In Kiss of the Dragon or Danny the Dog (which is a foreign made film made in the UK I think) there is a sort of kissing scene, but it's not the same as a straight on make out session between two love interests that you would normally see in a movie.

Which brings me to Race. Dragon focuses a lot on race in a way that the countless Bruce Lee movies (moves about Bruce) made in Hong Kong don't. In fact most of the story is sex and race, and then there's his  Kung Fu/teaching/culture that is the way he bridges the gap between east and west.  So let's look at a contemporary Asian male star. John Cho.
I saw an article putting the question forth of why John Cho doesn't have his own show yet. He's been in a ton of movies and shows. Everyone knows him pretty much. Why doesn't he have his own show. Dragon talks about Bruce Lee's creating of the Kung Fu series and then his ideas being stolen from him and David Carridine being cast instead. Whatever the true story is, the point is Bruce was definitely a natural choice for that role and he didn't get it and race was probably a factor. But what about now?

Now we have John Cho. Why can't John Cho have his own show? Aziz Ansari can. Maybe you have to be funny. After all , John Cho became known through Harold and Kumar. Maybe comedy is more powerful than Kung Fu.

It is also interesting that in Flash Forward John Cho's love interest was black. I saw this as a step forward. But Grace mentioned that of course they would put him with someone white. But now Asians males are allowed to bed other non-whites. Just saying that the movie based on Linda Lee's book, is still very relevant today.

Emotionally, it was a nice little story too. I cried at the end. And again Bruce Lee is now more influential than he was when he was alive, and his influence is likely to grow when more movies are made. But more on that next time.