Kung Fu Hustle ... Culture, Genre and Industry

Kung Fu Hustle ( Stephen Chow, 2004) is a film that is co-written, co-produced, directed by and stars Stephen Chow. The film encourages viewers to reflect upon the past and its present conditions of China , its people and culture, as well as Hong Kong’s cinemas industry. Throughout the film there are scenes that reflect a 1940s Shanghai. Contextually the film also illustrates the handover of Hong Kong to China in 1997, reflecting the regions political change from being a British colony in its past to a becoming part of the People’s Republic of China. Kung Fu Hustle also parodies many martial art films and genres from both the west, Hollywood and from the east, China. Kung Fu Hustle is a film that can be placed in its cultural , industrial and generic context.

Industrially the film pays homage to the Shaw Brothers studio films and the kung fu genres. On the other hand in terms of the wuxia genre ,the film has references to the wuxia works of The Buddhist Palm (which was a major element plot based on the 1982 martial arts film Ru Lai Shen Zhang (Taylor Wong, 1982) Many classic kung fu films refer to the Buddha Palm as a supernatural mixture of spiritual strength and physical power. Stephen Chow enjoyed a series of films based on the idea of Buddha Palm produced in Hong Kong in the 1960s and reprised by Shaw Brothers in Buddha's Palm (1982). The film alludes directly to the Shaw Brothers studio system in which Chow cast Chang Cheh a martial arts director of that studio era. Most of the characters are portrayed by respected martial artists, kung fu film actors, and Peking Opera performers. Chang Cheh influenced Chows casting choices for the film as he had a favourite which was Dong Zhihua who plays Doughnut. Even the Pig Sty setting is borrowed from the 1973 film The House of 72 Tenants (Chor Yuen,1973) also by the Shaw Brothers studio. Ironically this film beat Bruce Lees Enter The Dragon (Robert Clouse,1973) in 1973 too. The Shanghai setting therefore alludes to the past cinematic world of the Shaw Brothers films.

Kung Fu Hustle is a co-production of the Beijing Film Studio and Hong Kong's Star Overseas and was distributed by Columbia Pictures. Thematically the film does explores the past and present. Evidence to support this comes from the circular narrative that the film employs. Stephen Chow’s character Sing is obsessed with his childhood memory in which he was sold a false Buddhist script. He attempts to saves a girl from school bullies but fails and as a result lives a life of crime as Sing realises that the "good guys never win". With the films multiple references to genres, the film throughout explores the history of cinema from mainland China, Hong Kong and that of Hollywood cinema. A critic had argued that ,"Chow’s passionate embrace of the history of popular film makes quotation more than subliminal but turns it into sublime moments of global integration"(Stephen Teo,2007:129).The kung fu genre, the actors and the parodied films, all provide what Edwin Jurriens calls a "intertextual minefield"(Edwin Jurriens, 2008:308).Audiences are bound to cross these ‘minefields’. This becomes important as it draws audiences from regional, local and global areas, drawing audiences from China, Hong Kong and the west itself. Thus the films engrossment of $100 million worldwide at the box office shows how Kung Fu Hustle was able to draw audience from a local Asian market to a global one, reflecting the concept of ‘Glocalisation’. By referencing the Shaw Brothers Martial art films, this acts as a global approach to draw global audiences. Yet the local aspect that Chow uses is seen through the Columbia Asian division, which works through local taste. Kung Fu Hustle’s place both amongst the plethora of recent transnational martial arts films and within the history of kung fu cinema.

Both Chinese and Hollywood films have significant cultural effect. The films , The Shining (Stanley Kubrick,1980) and most dominantly The Matrix (Wachowski brothers,1999-2003) and A West Side Story( Robert Wise,1961) with the Axe Gang dance paying tribute to this. The film draws on connotation of the western genre with Sing’s character being an outlaw. The film also references The House of 72 Tenants. The landlady in Kung fu Hustle has a cigarette in her mouth yet in 72 Tenants the lady has a toothbrush. It is these visual gags and jokes that pave the way to reading Kung Fu Hustle as a "cinema of attractions"(Edwin Jurriens, 2008:45). However it could be argued that Stephen Chow’s jokes and gags in his film are a result of his personal consciousness wanting to address Hong Kong’s cultural, political and economical issues of both past and present. This ties in with the theory of psychoanalysis. In 1905 Sigmund Freud analysed humour in his book ‘Jokes and Their Relation to The Unconscious’ (Matte,2001:12). Freud’s argument was that jokes surfaced when a persons consciousness allowed forbidden thoughts which society suppresses. This is very much the case with Kung Fu Hustle in which the mass appeal comedy and action is used to hide any political referencing. Stephen Chow hides his political criticism of the lower class people through depicting them as extraordinary people amongst the ordinary. But he is only able to do this through the visual jokes and blends them with the political allusion to the film of The House Of 72 Tenants . However it is also possible to argue that Kung Fu Hustle is just a film that only pays homage to films with no subtext underneath.

Kung Fu Hustle blends the conventions of the Hong Kong martial arts genre and the gangster, western, slapstick genre. However the most significant genre that the film explores is that of the wuxia pian genre. Kung Fu Hustle is indeed a martial arts comedy, but it incorporates many of the conventions of the wuxia genre and in particular urbanises the themes of Jianghu. Instead of having rivers and lakes as settings, the film uses buildings and casinos as a narrative. Furthermore it soon becomes clear that Pig Sty Alley is the home to a number of martial arts masters who have sought to leave Jianghu behind them. The film takes place in Shanghai during the 1940s. Nonetheless this is Shanghai very much like that in Shanghai Noon (Tom Dey,2000), a western comedy shanghai, it is anarchic ruled by the Axe Gang, who previously terrorized Shanghai in the 1972 Shaw Brothers film Boxer From Shantung (Chang Cheh, 1972)and Drunken Master II (Lau Kar-Leung,1994) by Golden Harvest. The character of Sing does not follow the code of xia. He is not a noble or honourable at the start of the film. However by the end of the film he transforms into a xia hero as he defends the landlady, landlord and the Pig Sty alley residents from the beast. The Landlady and Landlord stand for the traditional wuxia hero(ine) who battle the Axe Gang to defend their Pig Sty home. The Axe Gang represent the anti authoritarian mind-sets that make them outlaws as opposed to civilised people in traditional society. They also drive the wuxia pian narrative into final showdown between the protagonist, Sing and his nemesis, the Beast. The history of xia is that of a disruptive social force, defiance against oppression. Kung Fu hustle also depicts the world of Jianghu through portraying both Sing and the Axe gang are outcasts and outlaws and clearly there is no courts of law, they are merely dysfunctional.

The setting of the film is important as it reflects the economical and political issues of China during the 60’s and 90’s. Pig Sty Alley is a reference to the Kowloon walled city of Hong Kong, reflecting Hong Kong’s colonial history. It was caught between a political and legal dispute between the Britain and mainland China before the handover took place in 1997. It is a no mans land ,neither British or Chinese, it is caught between the two powers. Kung Fu Hustle is littered with references to this ‘no mans land’. The film is set in 1940’s Shanghai as it references the economical debate whereby " Shanghai contributing about 10% of the GDP yet the city authorities had little concern to protect the water bodies in its environments"(Seungho Lee,2006:236). Evidence to support this comes from the water ration scene reflecting the severe draughts that Hong Kong went through during the 60’s. On the other hand the film draws on post colonialism in which the Axe gang’s mise en scene and costumes reflect Hong Kong’s modernism as they all wear black business suits and drive cars as opposed to the pig sty alley residents.

Comparisons can be drawn between Kung Fu Hustle and The House Of 72 Tenants film. Both films include the important staircases buildings. The buildings are also used in Kung Fu Hustle as a set, part of a mise-en-scene that acts as a theatrical space and allows Chow/Sing to battle the Axe Gang. Before 72 Tenants the Hong Kong film industry of the 1960s and early 70s was dominated by Mandarin films, produced by the studio of Shaw Brothers with the help of actors and actresses emigrating from Shanghai. However 1973 is celebrated for being the "… year in which no Cantonese pictures were produced, Shaw Brothers, which was still regarded as the king of the Mandarin film studios, took the lead in the revival of Cantonese by making and releasing The house of 72 tenants."(Gary G. Xu, 2007:92).This is complimented further by David Bordwell’s comments that "in 1973 no other films in the local dialect were made". (Bordwell, 2000: 18). This is important to note as this had revived the Cantonese films that Stephen Chow was so used to watching when he was young. The Cantonese comeback also introduced authentic narratives about people who were socially inept and poverty stricken.

In conclusion it is clear that Kung Fu Hustle represent 1940s Shanghai. Steven Chow scatters and literally litters his film with the history of kung fu/ Hong Kong cinema and the wuxia pian themes. Kung Fu Hustle blends the present with the past and the history of cinema into this blockbuster film. The film clearly adheres to the observations made one film critic. They suggested that Kung Fu Hustle is a "intertextual hall of mirrors"(Edwin Jurriens, 2008:304).The film evidently layers reference upon reference from other films, drawing on the history of Hollywood and Hong Kong cinema rather than the history of Southern China for its visual and narrative context. Thus Kung Fu Hustle calls attention and relies on its intertextuality to the martial arts. Sing’s character adheres to the xia hero, he is the conventional martial arts hero at the end of the film. In contrast to the Hollywood films of the Matrix , Kung Fu Hustle combines choreography and special effects to parody CGI. The film also revitalizes the story elements of wuxia culture, exploring the world of Jianghu, Kung Fu Hustle satirizes martial arts films and generically lampoons the association of xia masculinity. The film subverts against the Jackie Chan and Bruce Lee masculine appeals. Pig Sty Alley is full of unlikely martial arts warriors, including a child who has muscles, a cook, landlady and landlord. Its fair to conclude that Kung Fu Hustle was a film that responds to how Hollywood has used both the kung-fu and wuxia genres. The Matrix fight scene is parodied to suggest how Hollywood has incorporated and yielded to the forms of Asian cinema. The film has adapted its comic style for a international audience, has become global through local references. This is all to help the film cross borders, initially is Glocal. Therefore Kung Fu Hustle is a film that that can be placed in its cultural , industrial and generic context.

“To treat these lovelorn films as abstract allegories of Hong Kong’s historical situation risks losing sight of W.Kar wai’s naked feelings about LOVE"

Wong Kar-Wai is a Second Wave director who is linked by his socially engaging attitude to young romance, his commitment to history, and his interest in the identity of Hong Kong as a place that during the years preceding and following the 1997 was handed over to Mainland China. His films often reflect the directors appeal which is “to recognise the past which has formed him but to bend it in the present to face his future, like Hong Kong”(Peter Brunette,2005:45) Chungking Express (Wong Kar Wai,1994) In The Mood For Love (Wong Kar-wai,2000) Happy Together (Wong Kar-wai,1997) and Days of Being Wild (Wong Kar-wai,1991) are all lovelorn films that intermingle the characters relationships with the historical situation at the time: the pre and post 1997 handover. Wong Kar Wai films can not be viewed as romantic films without some form of nostalgia of Hong Kong’s historical situation.

Wong Kar Wai films have characters who embody loneliness and this is often paralleled with the way people of Hong Kong were separated from the people in Mainland China and the tensions this had caused during the 80’s. At the time that Chungking Express was being made, Hong Kong was undergoing changes and moving even closer towards the historical moment, its handover to China in 1997. The character of Wu the young cop in the film comments after dumping his girlfriend that “If my memory of her has an expiration date, let it be 10,000 years”. As a result every day he buys a tin of pineapple with an expiration date of the day he ended his relationship. The canned pineapples and romantic relationships share a reciprocal relationship themselves . Therefore this very lovelorn obsession that Wu has with his food and ex girlfriend is an allegory that had been very common among people in Hong Kong during the last few years before 1997: an expiration date was date stamped on the city of Hong Kong. The character of Wu is perplexed when he buys the cans of pineapples. It is as if he is experiencing the colonized cultures of the West. The symbols being music, food and many other products. These symbols appear within a lovelorn environment to highlight the history of Hong Kong. People thought that the day of handover would be the ‘expiration’ of the Hong Kong they were now in. Therefore the people in Chungking Express are uncertain about their love in the same way as Hong Kong citizens were unsure about their future.

Moreover young romance is explored further in the character of Faye in Chungking Express. Faye is a lonely young women who tells the audience in a voiceover that she is isolated from the rest of the crowd and is fearful of relationships; this is most obvious in the bar scene in which she resisted the young cop Wu’s flirtation. People in Hong Kong were just like her when it comes to her attitude towards the people of Mainland China, who were about to be united with them in one nation. People of Hong Kong have by and large high standards of living standards and expectations. Therefore it appears that young romance in Hong Kong was under threat as it was unclear whether they could ever form a relationship with a person from Mainland China, form a relationship with a foreigner. Faye’s uncertainty towards love plays into the hands of her historical situation.

Wong Kar Wai films, some would argue, struggle with issues of representations of sexuality, and culture within a post modern context. His films do however highlight representations of young love. Yet perhaps ironically, at the historical moment the Hong Kong film industry was finding and portraying specifically ‘Hong Kong identity’ and what is was to be a Hong Kongoer as seen in films such as Infernal Affairs (Andrew Lau, Alan Mak,2002) and Who Am I (Benny Chan, Jackie Chan,1998). However Happy Together is a film that highlight the theme about young romance, and more so about young sexuality. It appears from the narrative that Wong Kar Wai saw homosexuality as wayward and even foreign. For Hong Kong cinema, the late 80s was also a period of social change signalled by more liberal attitudes towards film censorship and the decriminalisation of homosexuality, confirmed in 1990 through a majority vote in the legislative council. The very narrative of a homosexual relationship compliments Bordwell’s concept that Wong Kar Wai wanted to highlight that this film is more than an abstract allegory to the historical situation at the time, this being the laws passed in 1990. This film is a lovelorn film and it clearly establishes that in the opening scene of the film where they are making love.

Yet on the other hand Wong Kar Wai’s himself can be read as “the allegorist of post-modern urban culture”(David, Harvey,1990:103).Wong Kar wai’s films tend to depict in great detail the lives of Hong Kong residents as they struggle with issues of romantic and domestic love and the search for personal identity. The director very often pairs the themes of young romance with that of the landscape and mise en scene of Hong Kong in his films. The film Happy together is a clear allegory of Hong Kong’s historical situation. It becomes problematic when the film takes the route of a romantic lovelorn narrative yet only achieves this through constantly referencing Hong Kong’s political situation of immigration. The film deals with a couple who come from a pre-handover Hong Kong and they visit Argentina hoping to renew their ailing relationship. Here the director couples images of urban landscapes with the characters search for their identity and romantic journey. The opening shots of the film follow multiple shots of passports. These serve the dual purpose of emphasising travel , the characters romantic and physical journey by the two leads as well as hinting at a concept of identity. Shots of the passports also emphasise the crossing of national boundaries; the political situation at the time. Both characters are British Nationals (Overseas).This acts as a direct reminder of the omnipresence of 1997 for Hong Kong citizens. Therefore Wong Kar Wai uses the urban landscape as a back drop to his characters romantic journey, suggesting that the passports denote their identity, but more the passports denote their sexual identity. Wong thus acknowledges the significance of history, especially for Hong Kong citizens who are constantly in transition, the passports in Happy Together are allegories of the characters sexual and love journey.

The soundtracks that Wong Kar Wai uses in some of his films often reflect the emotional aspect of his narratives but also serve the multiple purpose of addressing Hong Kong

’s past. Days of Being Wild and In The Mood for Love are two films that explore the emotion of love through their soundtracks. The Cantonese language was widely used in both films. Contextually Cantonese was one of the two official languages in Hong Kong; the other being English. There was no Mandarin in either film. For In The Mood for Love this concludes that the language in Hong Kong was not largely influenced by Mainland China in post-1997 Hong Kong. Evidently In The Mood for Love also uses a celebrated traditional 1946 Chinese song. Therefore this shows that Wong implied that Mainland Hong Kong culture was gradually influenced by China after 1997. In terms of lovelorn romance this track was always played when the characters of Tony Leung and Maggie Cheung were alone. Ironically western tracks such as the track “I’m in The mood for love” by Nat King Cole was used and ran parallel when the two lovers were together. It appears that Wong Kar Wai does appeal to our feelings about young romance, examining how two individuals bond without actually kissing. He explores intimacy yet once again he is only able to achieve this by alluding to the historical situation at the time. He values the past memories of the day when Hong Kong was colonized by the British. He achieves this by using the track of Hua Yang De Nian Hua which is based on a song by famous singer Zhou Xuan from the Solitary Island period. The 1946 song, used in Wong's film, is a paean to a happy past and an indirect metaphor for the darkness of Japanese-Occupied Shanghai. In his film this track does not symbolise the Japanese Sino war but becomes more a substitute, an allegory for the past memories of the day when Hong Kong was colonized by Britain. Wong preferred to use Nat King Cole’s songs to accompany Chow Mo-Wan and So Lai Chun’s affair, but used the 1946 traditional Chinese song to portray the loneliness of two protagonists. Nat King Cole’s songs romanticized Chow and So’s love affair and seemed to convince them to run away from their respective marriage. Alternatively, traditional Chinese songs were played with an absolutely opposite purpose. These songs always appeared with the scenes that Chow and So missed each other and they were longing to be loved. It may be metaphorical that Wong applied cultural hybridity to present that Hong Kong enjoyed being influenced by Western cultures as well as Mainland Chinese cultures. The Chinese music no doubt reflects post 1997 Hong Kong despite being set in the 60’s. Wong Kar Wai suggests that the characters are happiest when they hear western music because they are comfortable with their way of life. However more significantly is the Chinese music. This music acts as exposition for how people in post 1997 Hong Kong were struggling to form a new relationship themselves with a new Country, Mainland China. It therefore appears that young romance was unable to flourish in a post handover Hong Kong because the Hong Kong residents had to brace themselves for their new allegorical affair with China, as people were unsure how their lives would change once Hong Kong returned to China in 1997. It becomes more about a future relationship between Hong Kong with China then about the characters themselves. Therefore the soundtrack in In The Mood for Love does

lose sight of Wong Kar wai’s naked appeal to our feelings about young romance as it juxtaposes the storyline with Hong Kong’s post handover anxieties.

To conclude its clear that Wong Kai Wai’s films show a desire to contrast a character’s narrow-minded consciousness with wider social repercussions of change, most notably the pre and post 1997 changes to Hong Kong society. The characters of Wong Kar Wai's films have adjusted from worrying over whether to leave Hong Kong or not . This was seen in Happy Together contemplating how they feel about the handover. The characters in Chungking Express feel happy, and through this film the director invites the Hong Kong audience to adopt an optimism about things they cannot control, such as the handover. In the last stressful years before 1997, such a portrait of hope must have brought inspiration for the frightened citizens who were about to experience the biggest political change in their lives. Wong attempts to bond the landscape of his lovelorn outsiders and inevitably as a post modern auteur he is seen in his films delving into melodramatic and romantic moments linking them both to the history and the personal, whether directly or indirectly. Notions of identity and the ever-present fusion between East and West find context in the themes of love, loneliness and alienation no better seen and heard than in the soundtrack of In The Mood for Love in which all these elements pervade his protagonists. Tension between the past and present is linked to desire, memory, time and environment. Happy Together blends the landscape of Hong Kong with objects such as passports to directly question Hong Kongers about their identity and where they will stand following the handover in 1997. Agreeably, “to treat these lovelorn films as abstract allegories of Hong Kong’s historical situation risks losing sight of Wong Kar wai’s naked appeal to our feelings about young romance”. Its clear that on screen we do not see young romance exist independently on screen but rather we witness ‘young romance’ take a form of itself and has paradoxically its own relationship with ‘history’.