Bruce Lee "put balls" on Chinese men!?!?!

Cafe Society
1

I Am Bruce Lee - Movie Trailers - iTunes

Damn, but this gets my goat

new documentary about Bruce Lee. Looks pretty cool. But in the middle of this trailer, as we hear a montage of various personalities giving short comments about what Bruce Lee was, we hear a woman (otherwise unknown to me) say, “He’s put balls on Chinese men…”

Say what?

What are the assumptions behind this statement? Nevermind. whatever it is, it boils down to Chinese men in general must not satisfy some white Western female conception of the masculine–and, since we are talking about Bruce Lee, that conception must include as a requirement a propensity to violence…

Allow me to extend a heartfelt middle finger to this woman and her conception of masculinity. Anyone here know who she is?

2

Bruce Lee was a teabagger?

3

I think what she may have been saying was that PREVIOUS to Bruce Lee, Chinese men were not portrayed in Western popular media as action heroes. It was Lee and his popularity that made the West realize that Chinese dudes can kick ass, thankyouverymuch.

It’s not that Chinese men ACTUALLY were less masculine they were just not portrayed as such to a Western audience.

So fuck the movie makers maybe but not some lady who is explaining why Bruce Lee was different than all of the Chinese actors before him.

4

The Chinese I recall before Bruce Lee were Charlie Chan and his teenage kids. Hop Sing on Bonanza. Heck, Asians were often played by Caucasians in movies.

Things changed a lot after Bruce Lee.

5

Carol. She really is a nice lady once you get to know her.

6

Better than what Mr. T did.

Based on the cast listing, I think the woman in question is Bruce Lee’s goddaughter, Diana Lee Inosanto. Here she is with a man (who presumably has testicles despite not being Chinese).

7

They could be handsome, too. Like you said, things changed a lot. Lots of folks have no idea how much pop culture has changed in the past 40 years.

8

This makes sense.

9

I recall reading something from George Takei that, until he landed The Sulu role, that he had to work very hard to get jobs that weren’t “generic Asian servant” roles or Hop Sing comic relief. He mentions only one Japanese-American agent, things like that. Nobody even considered Asian actors as action stars.

(Digging around, the recollection is in William Shatner’s Star Trek Memories.).

10

Hell, the stereotype was so ingrained, they wouldn’t even cast Lee in the lead for Kung Fu - apparently, they didn’t feel a Chinese martial artist could convincingly play a Chinese martial artist, so they gave the role to David Carradine.

I wonder if the guy who made that decision ever stopped kicking himself?

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Considering they’re both dead, I’d say no.:smiley:

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Well, maybe a little bit. I really doubt that Bruce Lee did much to enforce the notion of Asian men being handsome, though. I don’t doubt that some women thought he was sexy, but he was viewed primarily as a kick-posterior action hero rather than as an object of desire. He certainly wasn’t considered to be a romantic lead by any stretch of the imagination.

Nowadays, guys like Jet Li and Chow Yun Fat have made some progress toward perpetuating the image of a good-looking Asian lead. This progress is still ever so slight, though. More recently, I was pleased to see that Jay Chou was given a dignified treatment in The Green Hornet, depicting him as an Asian man who could have romantic feelings and who could indeed be the object of a woman’s desire. Even then though, the on-screen relationship between him and Cameron Diaz’s character was devoid of any affection, much less any passion. As with most Western films, the Asian guy never even got to kiss the woman in question.

13

Not that I expect she ever read it, but those very words were the closing lines from a two-part biography article on Bruce Lee in Penthouse. I believe it was released around the 10-year anniversary of his death.

[One of the myths surrounding his death was a story that he had decided to retreat to a remote island in the Pacific while at the peak of his career and planned to come back in ten years. The article release timing was undoubtedly intentional.]

As noted in previous posts, the common USA stereotype for Asians (often all East and Southeast Asians lumped together, but considered distinct from the South Asians of India, Sri Lanka, and Pakistan) through the mid 1970’s was of a meek, servant-type who was geeky, myopic, and either stupid or unfamiliar with the USA’s culture (or both). Much of it was probably just latent prejudices hanging around after several wars that had East Asians (Korea, Viet Nam, Japan) opposing Western powers or relegated to menial positions (the Chinese were largely relegated to ditch-digging in support of the Allies and of course there was the notable wave of immigration for railroad work).

The cartoonists for the Green Hornet gave Kato a changing background for various reasons (I think Cecil had a response about it somewhere) going from Phillipino, Korean, Japanese, Chinese, Cambodian, Thai, (???)… The consistent point was that he was East Asian and a martial artist, as well as other things.

Lee was already an actor (Long Street) and had martial arts training, so he fit well into the Kato role. However, there were also other Asians doing martial arts with their acting. Robert Ito (Sam from Quincy) played a ninja in Kung Fu and there were several others brought in to play Caine’s opponents or teachers.

Lee’s movies broke the stereotype of the ‘Asian doormat.’ In some ways I think it merely added another stereotype to the list. However, Bruce’s son, Brandon, noted in an interview that he did see more varied roles opening for Asians and felt his father’s efforts helped open the door for that to be possible.

—G!

When you told Bruce Lee
You would kick his ass

It was a bad Idea
It was a bad Idea

. --Tony Mason
. A Bad Idea
. No Smurfing Aloud

14

She is indeed Diana Lee Inosanto.
Whoever she is (eventhough the god-daugther of the man himself) and whatever the context, that sentence should not have came out.

If I say “Elizabeth Taylor made me realized that not all Hollywood actresses are hookers”, what would that made you feel?

Stereotyping is just cruelly insensitive.

15

If the only roles for women previous to that were for whores, then I would be damn happy to hear it.

And she is not saying that it made HER realize than asian men have testicles. It made SOCIETY realize that not all asian men were meek, servile, and stupid, which was all they were allowed to be in popular culture, before Bruce Lee. She is talking about a change that happened in pop culture – not a personal opinion – and a change that signaled the END of a certain stereotype.

16

Actually, I find the trailer to be somewhat goofy not only with the choice of guys to heap epithets but some of the wording is straight dumb like the guys who says: “Bruce Lee, Bob Dylan, Audi, Jay-Z, Tiger, Kobe, Jordan - they all have the same spirit”.

Considering that it was produced by SpikeTV - which is, in terms of journalistic quality, an inch above MAXIM editorial board - I’m not surprised.

It will have its audience no matter how many degrees removed from philosophy of Bruce Lee.

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IIRC, traditional Chinese culture placed less admiration on physical courage and violence as a means of resolving problems. The Greek hero slaying tyrants and monsters; the beau ideal of the dashing young cavlary officer, etc., never had an equivalent chachet in China. They thought that civilization was advanced by scholars and princibled civil servants. Kind of a ballsy concept when you think about it.