Fighting Talk: Martial Arts Discourse in Mainstream Films

Bowman, Paul

doi:10.18573/jomec.186

Cited by 17 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 13 publications

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“…Both within one media context and beyond it -out into the wider world of other media, and other cultural and social contexts -clusters of connotations can coalesce into 'discursive entities' (Foucault 1978;Bowman 2019b;2019c). From wherever it may have been 'born' -an irreducibly complex process of multiple histories of European expansion, travellers' tales, colonial imperatives, wars, treaties, cultural anxieties, and more -the discursive entity of Chineseness has taken root in different media environments (art, advertising/communication techniques or strategies.…”

Section: Conclusion 1: Adverts and The Maintenance Of A Discursive Enmentioning

confidence: 99%

From Chop Suey to Chop-Socky: The Construction of Chineseness in British Television Adverts

Bowman

2020

JOMEC Journal

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Edward Said's theory of orientalism proposes that Western European culture has overwhelmingly tended to (mis)represent non-European cultures, societies, regions, and ethnic groups via mythic, romantic, simplistic and simplifying sets of binaries. This article asks whether orientalism remains present or active within contemporary media, by analysing the representation of 'Chineseness' in British television adverts between 1955 and 2018. It argues that a predictable, recurring, limited set of aural, visual and narrative clichés and stereotypes have functioned-and continue to function-as the principal resources to evoke 'Chineseness' in British television adverts. The analysis suggests that caricatures, clichés and stereotypes of China, Chinese people, locations, artifacts and phenomena are so common that there can be said to be a glaring seam of unacknowledged, uninterrogated orientalism functioning to maintain a kind of 'invisible' racism in British advertising.

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Section: Conclusion 1: Adverts and The Maintenance Of A Discursive Enmentioning

confidence: 99%

From Chop Suey to Chop-Socky: The Construction of Chineseness in British Television Adverts

Bowman

2020

JOMEC Journal

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The Role of Wushu Martial Arts Representation in the Contemporary Mass Culture of the World

Xue,

Bai,

Niu

et al. 2023

Critical Arts

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The Invention of Martial Arts

Bowman¹

2020

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The Invention of Martial Arts examines the media history of what we now call ‘martial arts’ and argues that martial arts is a cultural construction that was born in film, TV, and other media. It argues that ‘martial arts’ exploded into popular consciousness entirely thanks to the work of media. Of course, the book does not deny the existence of real, material histories and non-media dimensions in martial arts practices. But it thoroughly recasts the status of such histories, combining recent myth-busting findings in historical martial arts research with important insights into the discontinuous character of history, the widespread ‘invention of tradition’, the orientalism and imagined geographies that animate many ideas about history, and the frequent manipulation of history for reasons of status, cultural capital, private or public power, politics, and/or financial gain. In doing so, the book argues for the primacy of media representation as key player in the emergence and spread of martial arts, and overturns the dominant belief that ‘real practices’ are primary while representations are secondary. The book makes its case via historical analysis of the British media history of such Eastern and Western martial arts as Bartitsu, jujutsu, judo, karate, taiji, and mixed martial arts (MMA) across a range of media, from newspapers, comics, and books to cartoons, films, and TV series, as well as television adverts and music videos, focusing on often overlooked texts such as adverts for ‘Hai Karate’, the 1970s hit ‘Kung Fu Fighting’, and other mainstream and marginal media texts.

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Fighting Talk: Martial Arts Discourse in Mainstream Films

Cited by 17 publications

References 13 publications

From Chop Suey to Chop-Socky: The Construction of Chineseness in British Television Adverts

From Chop Suey to Chop-Socky: The Construction of Chineseness in British Television Adverts

The Role of Wushu Martial Arts Representation in the Contemporary Mass Culture of the World

The Invention of Martial Arts

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