Okay, in the media these days I’m seeing a lot of things referring to people possessing some mystic power to “float.” The annoying Mountain Dew commercial a while ago with the two women fighting and actually gliding down from rooftops to fight before sharing a Mountain Dew. Then there’s the obnoxious commercial for Kikkoman (sp?) where the mother calls the kids to dinner and they all fly home for dinner. What the hell? And then there’s that dumb looking fight move I’m seeing in movies where a person jumps and hovers in midair for a few seconds while stomping repeatedly on their opponent’s chest. I always see this stuff in the context of martial arts, or at least among some Eastern cultural references. What is the origin of this “floating?”
Being able to defy gravity is a common fantasy theme. In modern temrs, it goes back at least as far as Superman (1938) and in myth, much further. In recent years, it has become possible to make reasonably good-looking martial arts films using floating as an effect ('reasonably" meaning the harness is less obvious) and the whole image got a major jump (as it were) with The Matrix and (even more so) Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, which I found personally to be an overblown snooze.
Here in the greater Washington DC area, GEICO insurance runs an ad wherein its agents are supposedly able to process claims extrordinarily quickly because of “ancient martial arts secrets of the Wu sha”. They are able to fly around the office and so forth. It’s stupid and, to me, offensive.
Yeah, they’re pretty much all ripping off Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. It’s just another ad fad.
JCHeckler: Same commercial out here. It’s supposed to be a parody. (Notice the woman out of control in the background, dropping her papers.)
As usual, no coffee yet. But let me try to muddle through my WAG.
It started with the Bruce Lee-type martial arts films. The fighting is very stylized. As martial arts films became more and more stylized in the 1970s, the incredible fighting abilities of the good guys got more and more outlandish.
In the 1980s there was a comedy show out of Seattle called Almost Live. They had a segment starring “Billy Kwan” where Billy is just having a good time when he is abused in some way by an obnoxious bald guy (the show’s host). They did the whole non-synched lip movement thing and it was very funny. Inevitably, Billy would take a flying jump at the bad guy. The shot would be from his POV, so the screen would show his legs sticking out horizontally as if he was flying horizontally through the air and was looking toward his feet. (Sorry, not enough caffeine to be totally coherent yet.) Then you would “see what Billy sees” as he flies toward the baddie. As the bald guy tried to evade, Billy would stop in mid-air and the legs would sometimes “sniff around” to find the bald guy. After just enough of this, they would cut to a non-POV shot as Billy tackles his foe. Funny stuff.
Then came… I don’t remember his name. Jet Li? Something like that. Suddenly we had modern martial arts films that were very popular. Of course the abilities of the combatants had to be incredible. These films “took it up a notch”.
Finally we see Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon which had the most stylized fighting scenes of all. The idea is that these people are such good fighters and have such phenomenal control over their martial arts techniques that they can fight in treetops and while they are falling through the air. Falls that would kill an untrained person don’t faze them because they have such control over their bodies. They are perfect Zen-masters who are in harmony with every molecule of their being. To portray this on the screen, the director chose to use extremely stylized shots to symbolize their prowess. I think this looks odd to Western eyes because we aren’t used to the stylized movements of Asian theatre.
And let’s not forget Matrix, where these people move so fast that they can only be caught in ultra-slow-motion.
People liked the “look” and so it was immitated and parodied, and that’s why we see it so much.
Anyway, that’s a guess from someone who is not a martial artist, martial arts movie fan, nor Asian.
Oh yeah: “Be like Billy!” 
This is really old stuff in Hong Kong. We call 'em flip-kick flicks. This technique has been around since at least the 1980’s but just now getting into mainstream American advertising.
My friend from Taiwan says there is a genre of popular literature where the hero can fly and do that sort of thing. I don’t know the name for it, but it is traditional, her father was really into it. I think also some (very traditional) people really believe that this is possible in the martial arts.
Since this is about a movie and the commercials it has spawned, I’ll move this thread to Cafe Society.
Ike: “Why is Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon like a late autumn day?”
Mike: “Because there’s always a little nip in the air!”
[Eve apologizes in advance, ducks and runs]
Goddam . . . serves me right . . . I try to be a wiseass and screw up the italics . . .
The name is Wuxia:
CTHD brought it to a mainstream american audience, but it’s old news in China.
That would explain the Geico commercial.
gonzoron, thanks for the link!
Glad I’m not the only person to think “The Emperor has no clothes!” when I saw this waste of celluloid…Timmy
Ditto.
It’s also a phenomenon from Tibet, at least as witnessed by A. David-Neel in “Magic and Mystery in Tibet”, called lung gom pa; walking in a trance state, with some sort of antigravity effect. In the USA, people report that sleepwalkers do such things. Remember that old Popeye cartoon?! Proof!!! 
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I’m not usually one for martial arts movies (I’m more into Jackie Chan than Bruce Lee), but I thought Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon was terrific. Serious acting, amazing fight scenes, two good romantic plots, and gorgeous scenery. What’s not to like?
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BTW, there’s an IMHO thread at the moment on the appropriateness of the term “Oriental”.
And Crouching Tiger rocked!
While this doesn’t explain the flying thing, one concept about how they can run/jump on water was that they had such precise balance/weight distribution that they clould step on tiny objects floating in the water (blades of grass, twigs, etc) without breaking the water tension. The same could be argued for being able to stand on a friggin leaf in a tree.