Chang Cheh via Baudrillard

Jimmy Wang Yu's sacrificial suicide in The Assassin (Chang Cheh, 1967). Entering a "symbolic" economy beyond the logic of rational exchange and accumulation. 

From the end of the first chapter of Jean Baudrillard's Symbolic Exchange and Death:

"Since it [the system of contemporary society] thrives on my slow death [in labour], I will oppose it with my violent death. and it is because we are living with slow death that we dream of a violent death. Even this dream is unbearable to power." (p.43)

Baudrillard isn't the most trendy philosopher any more, but the passage could be a way of interpreting the "dream of a violent death" proffered in, above all, Chang Cheh films. What matters in these, much more than beating the bad guy, or even winning history, is achieving a glorious death. And it is in such embrace of sacrifice that the films imagine the heroes – often class outsiders – as wresting back their subjectivity. It is also in such gestures that they keep alive the potential to reclaim the future from subjugation and domination. 

Here we are back, of course, in the logic of sacrificial expenditure in the mould of Marcel Mauss, set against the accumulative logic of the acquisitive villains of the movies. The gift economy is set against the economy of calculation. Kung fu training as Bataille-esque expenditure.

Chang Cheh on 60s wuxia and their social context

"swordsmen, assassins, martyrs and death-defying fanatics ... tragic men who defy authority and the establishment": Jimmy Wang Yu as the eponymous hero of Chang Cheh's The Assassin (1967). An icon of anti-authoritarian revolt for the counterculture?

"The 60s and the 70s were the most energetic periods of Hong Kong – the period when young people exerted themselves. The age of love tales was past. The masses were striving ahead in a rebellious mood and the colonial administration was receiving a shock to the system ... The martial arts pictures represented this spirit of the times. After I made The One-Armed Swordsman (1967), riots broke out in Kowloon. Then, during the riots, I made The Assassin (1967). In an [sic] Ming Pao Monthly article published on May 1968, titled 'Hong Kong's Anti-Establishment Movies and the Mass Movement,' Law Kar wrote: 'Zhang Che's movie characters are young swordsmen, assassins, martyrs and death-defying fanatics. His heroes are tragic men who defy authority and the establishment.' At the time, people called my movies 'violent', and 'bloody'. I always thought this was a very shallow way of looking at my movies."

From Chang Cheh's essay, "Creating the Martial Arts Film and the Hong Kong Cinema Style," in The Making of Martial Arts Films: As Told by Filmmakers and Stars (Hong Kong: Hong Kong Film Archive, 1999).

Chang Cheh was one of the key directors who transformed the martial arts genre in Hong Kong cinema during the late 1960s, pioneering the "kung fu" film. It's interesting to see him contextualise his practice in this way, considering that he is often counted a cultural conservative, with politics far from the radical left.