It looks at the history and legacy of the "kung fu craze" which swept America, Europe, and the broader world, in 1973–4. It lays out the background of the craze in Hong Kong's long history of martial arts cinema, and in the growing awareness of martial arts amidst changing ideas of China (and "The East") in Western culture in the 1960s and 1970s. I trace the unfolding of the craze and discuss some of its most important films, and explore the ongoing significance of the kung fu phenomenon. In particular, I explore the ways that the arrival of Bruce Lee and kung fu was bound up in changing (and challenging) traditional identities, both as gendered and raced, during this tumultuous period. A final chapter considers the return of martial arts in twenty-first century wuxia films, such as Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000), Hero (2002) and The Grandmaster (2013). Throughout, I explore not just film history, but martial arts within a wider popular culture from rap music to kids' cartoons.
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It's got some very generous recommendations!:
‘Fans and scholars alike will relish Luke White's remarkable exploration of kung fu cinema's explosive rise in the "West" and its ongoing influence in international culture. Fighting without Fighting is the definitive book on the subject.’ — Matthew Polly, bestselling author of American Shaolin, Tapped Out, and Bruce Lee: A Life‘A comprehensive and exhilarating journey through the cultural history of “kung-fu fever”, showing how the Asian martial arts have permeated everything from Blaxploitation cinema and Hanna-Barbera cartoons to seventies disco tunes and Marvel comic books. White’s electric prose crackles with all the brio and rigour of a classic kung-fu throwdown.’ —Gary Bettinson, editor-in-chief of Asian Cinema and author of The Sensuous Cinema of Wong Kar-wai‘This engagingly written book will be of great value for the scholars of kung fu cinema and martial arts aficionados seeking to expand their horizons about the development of the genre in the past five decades. White’s insightful and nuanced analysis not only helps us re-examine the enduring impact of the kung fu craze in the 1970s, but also rethink the key role that the genre plays in transnationalising cinema in the era of globalisation. With its inviting style, this work will enhance both film and martial arts studies collections.’ — Wayne K. T. Wong, School of East Asian Studies, University of Sheffield‘In Fighting without Fighting, Luke White explores the origins of the 1970s "Kung Fu craze" in Chinese culture, the resonances of "Eastern" and oppressed heroes and heroines, and the ways in which their spectacular bodies were dramatised in innovative cinematography. He describes their impact on feminism, Black American cultures, music, videogames and renegotiations of masculinity, showing how an opening up to aspects of the "Oriental" revised and enriched mid-twentieth-century sensibilities, and how revisiting them enlightens contemporary debates on decolonisation. He traces influences and echoes in contemporary world cinema and speculative fictions, where the magical and mystical meet with politics of race, gender and empowerment. This amounts to an expert and ambitious narrative that spirals outwards from the advent of Kung Fu in ’70s Hong Kong and Hollywood to encompass a wide historical, geographic and ideological scope in which Bruce Lee is a persistent presence, and has the last word.’ — Barry Curtis, Professor at the University of the Arts, London, and author of Dark Places: The Haunted House in Film
