Everybody Was Kung Fu Citing Inventing P

The Invention
of Martial Arts
Popular Culture between Asia and America
Paul Bowman
1
3
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Bowman, Paul, 1971– author.
Title: The invention of martial arts / popular culture between Asia and America /
Paul Bowman.
Description: New York, NY : Oxford University Press, 2021. |
Includes bibliographical references.
Identifiers: LCCN 2020016651 (print) | LCCN 2020016652 (ebook) |
ISBN 9780197540336 (hardback) | ISBN 9780197540343 (paperback) |
ISBN 9780197540367 (epub)
Subjects: LCSH: Martial arts—Anthropological aspects. |
Martial arts—History.
Classification: LCC GV1101 .B68 2021 (print) | LCC GV1101 (ebook) |
DDC 796.8—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020016651
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020016652
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Contents
Acknowledgements vii
Introduction 1
1. Conceptual Foundations—The Invention of Martial Arts: Popular

Culture between Asia and America 12
2. Modernity, Media, and Martial Arts: From Beginning at

the Origin to the Origin of the Beginning 32
3. Martial Arts into Media Culture 57
4. Everybody Was Kung Fu Citing: Inventing Popular Martial

Arts Aesthetics 77
5. From Linear History to Discursive Constellation 99
6. The Meaning of Martial Arts 129
7. I Want My TKD: Martial Arts in Music Videos 145
8. Martial Ads 177
9. The Invention of Tradition in Martial Arts 193
10. Inventing Martial Subjects: Toxic Masculinity, MMA,

and Media Representation 214
Conclusion: After the Invention 240
References 245
Index 259
4
Everybody Was Kung Fu Citing
Inventing Popular Martial Arts Aesthetics
Introduction: Two Phrases in Communication
The phrase, ‘Everybody was kung fu fighting’ is remarkable. It is one of the

most familiar and recognizable fragments of martial arts culture circulating
in the Anglophone world (and beyond). Along with a very small selection
of other aural and visual signifiers (such as the mythological image of the
black belt, Bruce Lee’s signature sounds—his caws and screams, and images
of ninjas, Shaolin monks, and black or white uniforms (about which we will
learn more in Chapter 5), the phrase, ‘Everybody was kung fu fighting’ con-
denses, captures, symbolizes, conveys, and communicates a great deal about
martial arts in and as a part of culture. As such, it deserves serious attention.
Yet, despite its mature age and familiar everyday status, few academics have
taken the time to stop and analyse the features of this song. This is so even
though numerous academic books and articles have included the phrase,
‘Everybody was kung fu fighting’ in their titles. But, more often than not, what
such works actually discuss is the culture around the song, not the features of
the song itself.
Yet, unpacking and reflecting on its formal features, and moving from these
to a reflection on how and why it came to have such significance, what it is
about, the way that it ‘works’, and what it ‘does’ will prove enlightening, not
only for martial arts studies projects interested in the status, place, roles, and
values of martial arts in popular culture and society, but also for media studies,
cultural studies, and social studies projects interested in understanding more
fully the ways that culture ‘itself ’ (if culture is one thing) actually ‘works’ in
terms of its relations, effects, affects, and textualities (S. Hall 1992). ‘Kung Fu
Fighting’ is extremely illuminating in this regard, in that it established an aes-
thetic and modified the cultural status of the discursive entity ‘martial arts’ in
international media culture in ways that have endured for decades. The song
itself is arguably a nodal point that not only invented, but also continues to
structure the aesthetics and values of martial arts as a discursive entity.
The Invention of Martial Arts. Paul Bowman, Oxford University Press (2021). © Oxford University Press.
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780197540336.001.0001.
78 The Invention of Martial Arts
The phrase, ‘Everybody was kung fu fighting’ is the core lyrical refrain of
the enduringly popular 1970s hit single ‘Kung Fu Fighting’ by Carl Douglas
(Douglas 1974). Its widespread and ongoing familiarity across an extremely
wide geographical and demographic sweep suggests that it is not merely
a relic, but also a significant monument and lasting testament to the 1970s
‘kung fu craze’. Upon its release, it announced, participated in, and promoted
an excited and exciting celebration of kung fu, in which ‘kung fu’ was short-
hand term for the emergent ‘boom’ (Morris 1990) of interest in Asian martial
arts in Western popular culture (Prashad 2002; Kato 2012). Subsequently—
no doubt because it is so catchy, concise, and arguably precise in capturing
that interest in kung fu—it has even come to ‘stand for’ that period of boom as
such. This is not only because over time it gained extra connotations, so that
it now strongly and nostalgically conveys ‘something about the 1970s’. I argue
that it is also because there are both key textual and contextual reasons why
this happened. These cast light on why it is so frequently used as extradiegetic
sound in television or radio programmes. It easily conjures up what is some-
times depicted as not merely the popularity of Asian martial arts in the 1970s,
but the widespread obsession with them (BBC 2012a; BBC 2013).
Certainly, the song both celebrates and is an example of a peculiarly 1970s
craze. It also arguably contains elements of 1970s bad taste. However, the song
is often regarded with affection, and rarely with the unease or distaste that
British people sometimes express for much British low culture of the 1970s
(Hunt 1998). Certainly, it is not unusual for commentators to hold up British
popular culture of the 1970s as the very exemplification of regrettable bad
taste. But the British relationship with its own media culture of the 1970s is
actually rather more complex than one of simple denunciation and renuncia-
tion. A brief consideration of this relation to the past is useful to set the scene
for our discussion of ‘Kung Fu Fighting’ and the establishment of martial arts
aesthetics in the 1970s.
This relationship is not only contextually relevant, it is also analytically
pertinent. The ironic-nostalgic structure of contemporary relationships with
the 1970s actually recapitulates what listeners have always both experienced
and related to this song. To illustrate all of this concisely, yet without either
speaking in generalities or undertaking too long a foray into the academic lit-
erature on 1970s media culture (Hunt 1998; Chapman 2011), we can instead
quickly consider one clear example of ‘Britain’ relating to its own recent his-
tory: a TV show called ‘It Was Alright in the 70s’.
Between 2014 and 2016, British TV channel, Channel 4, ran three six-part
series of ‘It Was Alright in the 70s’, which invited audiences to laugh with ap-
parent shock, dismay, and disbelief at the kinds of things that were deemed
Inventing Popular Martial Arts Aesthetics 79
acceptable and funny in the bad old days. The bad taste covered included a
great deal of overtly sexist and racist material. Bad-taste clips were punctuated
by ‘talking heads’, British TV celebrities who would be shown demonstrating
shock, laughing in disbelief, shaking their heads, or even holding their heads
in their hands, whilst also offering a running commentary on how outrageous
1970s British television was.
On first glance, seeing people acting shocked while viewing such mate-
rial may appear progressive. It might even be felt to be evidence of ‘Britain’
having attained a kind of cultural maturity. The problem, however, is that the
relation to such material encouraged by the TV programme was hardly what
one might call mature. The programme was obviously, knowingly, and delib-
erately pitched as anything but an exposé of former injustices; and none of
the ‘talking-head’ celebrities and interviewees appearing within it expressed
or discussed either having then been or currently being genuinely hurt, of-
fended, or saddened by the material. Overall, the show merely amounted to
the reiteration and enjoyment all over again of the same racist and sexist ma-
terial, while this time around also enjoying the affectation of shock and sup-
posed disbelief of the (often younger) celebrities who were presented as seeing
the material (as if) for the first time.
To borrow some classic phrases from Adorno and Horkheimer, the material
was therefore not only ‘pornographic and prudish’ but also ‘pre-digested’: the
entire structure of the show was based on an oscillation between titilla-
tion and revulsion, one that worked hard to tell the audience ‘how to react’
(Adorno and Horkheimer 1986). The narrator and the talking heads func-
tioned like a ‘laugh-track’ (Gillespie et al. 2016; Kalviknes Bore 2011; Waddell
and Bailey 2017; Baranowski et al. 2017), or indeed the Chorus of classical
drama—ostensibly merely ‘reflecting’ but actually establishing the ‘correct’ re-
action. The net result was that the 2014–2016 audience got to enjoy the old
material all over again (Žižek 1992), while also mocking the original broad-
casters and audiences of the 1970s, who inevitably came to be imagined as
childish, puerile, and prejudiced.
Of course, it has long been known that audiences can occupy more than
one pre-set position of reception in relation to media texts (S. Hall 1980).
Audiences may adopt an ironic position, for instance. Nonetheless, neither
the affectation of shock nor the supposedly ironic mode of contemporary
viewing possible here either signalled or somehow fostered the attainment of
a mature relation (‘transcendence’ or ‘sublimation’) in relation to what was de-
picted as the supposedly former condition of puerility and vulgarity. Rather,
things principally reiterated and redoubled, all the while adding to the sense
of ‘our’ current cultural superiority over that of people in the 1970s.
The topic of ironic enjoyment is pertinent here, and will return in our con-
sideration of listeners’ relationships with ‘Kung Fu Fighting’. But before get-
ting to this, let us here note that it will be eminently possible to argue that some
of these same problematic 1970s ‘bad-taste’ elements are present in ‘Kung Fu
Fighting’, and in the enjoyment of it. Nonetheless, crowds, audiences, listeners,
viewers, and partygoers continue to delight in it. Indeed, so well known and
so enjoyed is this song and these lyrics that to this day it remains highly un-
likely that one will meet a Brit, Australian, or American who could hear or
read the phrase, ‘Everybody was kung fu fighting’ and not immediately recog-
nize those words as making direct reference to the 1970s song.1
Not only do old and young people continue to know it, but unlike so many
artefacts of once popular cultural history that come to seem ephemeral and
eminently forgettable, it seems safe to say that its place within the mainstream
of ongoing living cultural memory and ongoing cultural literacy is safe and
secure. In terms of this song’s life (or afterlives), I propose that for both his-
torical and textual reasons, it is not likely to be forgotten anytime soon. This
is not because it has some inherent transhistorical value. It is rather because
it connected up so strongly, effectively, and affectively, in so many respects, to
both a mushrooming popular cultural formation of and around the Western
interest in Asian martial arts and the appealing, foot-tapping, easy-listening
dimensions of the then emergent new sound of disco (B. Brown 1997).
It is because of this positioning on the crest of two waves that the song went
on to signify 1970s British martial arts culture tout court; becoming both a
literal (lyrical) and sonic (musical) shorthand for part of a popular cultural
conjuncture (Hall et al. 1996). The oriental-sounding musical hook is still
played extradiegetically as background music on innumerable television pro-
grammes, and the phrase, ‘Everybody was kung fu fighting’ can and does con-
tinue to pop up everywhere, from the episode titles of television and radio
programmes to the titles, straplines, captions, and structuring imagery of
newspaper, magazine, blog, and even academic articles, as well as in books,
not only in Britain but internationally.
This is not to say that the song is universally recognized as unproblem-
atic. Enjoyment of it inevitably seems to careen through a range of politically
incorrect pleasures: through kitsch, through camp, through comedy, and
directly into the culturally awkward realms and registers of cultural cross-
dressing and cross-ethnic performance. The song seems to smell of cultural
1 In addition, there are also many people from non-English-speaking countries, particularly in Europe,
who are familiar with it. Some countries experienced the original version, while others released their own
national language versions. However, it is not clear how far any widespread cultural knowledge of the song
spread at the time, or currently reaches beyond the Anglophone world and several European countries.
appropriation, ‘yellowface’ caricature, stereotyping, and possibly therefore

even racism. People continue to worry about whether the song is racist and
whether liking it might thereby make them racist. Internet searches in 2018
returned results revealing that there continue to be regular online discussions
about this issue. Certainly, on first glance, it looks and sounds very much like
the song might be something that can or should be damned for what is today
(problematically) called ‘cultural appropriation’. This is because it involves
possibly disrespectful, insensitive, or ethno-culturally ‘illegitimate’ uses of
elements stereotypically associated with a given country, culture, or ethnic
group—in this case, China.
Given the arguably epochal significance of this popular cultural text (con-
stituting as it does the explosion into mainstream visibility of Asian martial
arts in the perhaps unexpected realm of popular music), all of this warrants
closer attention. Because the song and its performance involve cross-cultural
references and citations of all kinds, and because it still raises nagging or
niggling worries about racism, orientalism, or stereotyping, we initially carry
out our analysis of the song in terms of the conventional lines of questioning
common to media and cultural studies, asking, ‘Is it racist?’ However, in the
process, the ‘politically correct’ orientation of carrying out media and cultural
analyses in terms of politically correct identity politics will itself be problem-
atized and challenged (Chow 2007). This is because the ultimate aim of this
analysis is not to reach a verdict on whether the song is somehow acceptable
or offensive on racial or ethnic grounds. It is rather to learn more about the
ways that ‘martial arts’ has or have been invented within, by, and as a realm of
popular culture. In short, this analysis seeks principally to arrive at insights
into this seminal expression of martial arts culture in the 1970s and not merely
to conclude by making a judgement about whether the song is racist or not.
As Rey Chow once noted, we have known since Edward Said’s seminal 1978
study, Orientalism, that cross-ethnic and cross-cultural representations are
often—perhaps always—problematic; therefore, this observation should be
one of the starting points, rather than the conclusion of our analyses (Chow
1998; Bowman 2010c; 2013b).
Racist Fantasies
Scratching the surface of the textual features of this ostensibly simple pop
song actually reveals quite a complex situation. Certainly, the song may plau-
sibly be read as being organized by a kind of fantasy scenario in which im-
plicitly all Chinese men (or at least all of those in ‘funky Chinatown’) are
depicted as martial arts experts. Because of such apparently reductive stereo-

typing, the lyrics could be critiqued for ‘othering’ all Chinese and painting all
ethnically Chinese individuals with the same brush, and thereby imputing a
stereotypical quality onto them and regarding them as being ‘all the same’. As
Stuart Hall once argued, the claim that ‘they’—the other ethnic group—‘are
all the same’ is one of the most familiar and classic of all racist gestures (S.
Hall 1988; 1996).
But an equally plausible interpretation is that the lyrics could merely
be describing what was once seen at a kung fu demonstration, either in a
Chinatown or featuring performers from a Chinatown. Slightly closer atten-
tion to the lyrics certainly allows us to read them as if they are merely the
words of someone giving a breathless account of a jaw-droppingly impressive
kung fu demonstration.2 In fact, certain lyrical elements suggest that an even
more viable interpretation of the song is to regard it as the singer recounting
what was presumably his first experience of a kung fu class, again either in
Chinatown, or at least attended by at least some people from Chinatown. One
of the middle verses of the song is key here: this is the verse in which one or the
other of the only two named characters, ‘funky Billie Chin’ and ‘little Sammy
Chung’, announce ‘Here comes the big boss’, before quickly adding, ‘Let’s get
it on.’ Crucially, at this point, the singer then uses the word ‘we’. He says, ‘We
took a bow and made a stand’, before continuing with a phrase on which there
is no consensus on internet lyric websites. This is either ‘started swaying with
the hand’ or ‘started swaying with the band’. On my own listening, I hear it
as ‘hand’. In any case, in the next breath, the narrator adds in the first-person
singular that ‘a sudden motion made me skip’ and—again in the first-person
plural—‘now we’re into a brand-new trip’.
So, the narrator says we bowed and ‘made a stand’. The only people who
bow in either kung fu classes or demonstrations are participants. To bow and
then ‘make a stand’ presumably means to bow before moving into a particular
posture or stance. All of which strongly suggests that the narrator is a partic-
ipant in a kung fu class. ‘Swaying with the hand’ would support this reading,
while ‘swaying with the band’ might suggest either participation in a tradi-
tional kung fu demonstration or that the class included some musical accom-
paniment, perhaps to prepare the students for participation in a forthcoming
demonstration (McGuire 2015). This would also explain why either Billie or
Sammy says to the other(s), ‘Here comes the Big Boss [i.e. presumably, the
2 I will not be providing the reader with long quotations from the lyrics of this song. This is because
quoting from pop songs (and poetry) even for what is legalistically referred to as ‘fair use’ in academic pub-
lications often requires the payment of significant fees. Readers who wish to examine the song lyrics can
(ironically) find them freely available on all manner of websites.
teacher], let’s get it on [i.e. back to training].’ It would furthermore account for
the narrator’s feeling of being a little bit frightened, which is common for be-
ginners before and during classes—indeed, common for anyone on their first
visit to a new class or club.
All of this should go quite some way to problematizing any accusation of
racism within the lyrical content of the song. Admittedly, like many pop songs,
the lyrics are more suggestive than overly or overtly explanatory, but it is still
possible to construct a coherent interpretation for what they are describing.
And this coherent interpretation renders the song as the recounting of a scene
that took place within a traditional kung fu class, in which at least some of
the participants were Chinese, but which also included the singer/narrator of
the tale.
I emphasize all of this because it seems likely that any listener’s sense that
the song’s lyrics may be problematic would most likely relate to the pro-
visionally unclear status of the word ‘everybody’ in the insistently repeated
phrase, ‘Everybody was kung fu fighting’. Without attention to the detail of
the lyrics, the word ‘everybody’ might easily be taken to refer to a large group
of Chinese people somewhere. But, as we have just seen, ‘everybody’ is clearly
not necessarily referring to an exclusively Chinese collectivity, nor indeed
to be invoking a general or widespread situation. Of course, subsequently
the phrase, ‘Everybody was kung fu fighting’ came to be used to refer to the
general widespread situation in ‘kung fu craze’-era Britain. But in its initial
denotative meaning, ‘everybody’ just refers to the specific people that Carl
Douglas is singing about. However, it did soon come to refer to considerably
more people.
To use the semiotic distinction between literal denotative meanings and
connotative ones (Barthes 1957; S. Hall 1980), the connotative level opened
up by the song lyrics is the most interesting. For, as mentioned, the phrase
and the song have come, over time, to be used to connote, capture, or convey
the 1970s kung fu craze tout court. But if we also think of what the song asks,
invites, says, and does while we are listening to it (especially if we experience
it in a dance environment such as a disco or party), the ‘interpellating’ effects
of such ‘musicking’ (Small 1998; Gilbert and Pearson 1999; Mowitt 2002) gen-
erates a specific spin on the meaning: the ‘everybody’ referred to in the lyrics
switches from having a constative or descriptive status of a past situation into
having a performative effect: it quickly starts to work as a call—an invitation,
or kind of ‘hailing’ (what Althusser (1971) called ‘interpellation’)—to those
present. In the experience, ‘everybody’ most clearly comes to mean everyone
listening to and (ideally) dancing to the song here and now, in the moment of
hearing and experiencing it.
Significantly, however, in telling us about a situation ‘back then’, where eve-

rybody was (‘really’) kung fu fighting, the song also offers an invitation and
an opportunity for us all to now delight in dancing to it, while (comically)
striking some (pseudo) kung fu poses, and hence delighting in the fact that we
are striking such poses ironically—while ‘everybody’ back then was doing so
unironically.
There is a resonance here. If, as discussed in ‘Introduction: Two Phrases in
Communication’ at the beginning of the chapter, this ironic mode of enjoyment
exemplifies the structure of a currently common way of relating to 1970s pop-
ular culture, then we should consider what it may mean if it is already at work in
the structure of enjoyment solicited by a text like ‘Kung Fu Fighting’. Perhaps it
can help to further explain why this particular text can function so perfectly for
signifying ‘1970s-ness’. The song cites a phenomenon that we find both exciting
and frightening and actively encourages us to see what it feels like to act as if
we were doing it, but without really doing it, and doing it in the mode of fun or
irony. (We turn to the question of the effects that this relation has on the discur-
sive status of ‘kung fu’ and ‘martial arts’ in general, shortly.) In addition to the
pleasure it elicits in the present moment, the fact that the lyrics are in the past
tense may also go some way to explaining why this song evidently continues to
feel so appropriate as a way of capturing the era of the martial arts boom.
In terms of our interpretation of the literal meaning of the lyrics or their
overall effects in relation to the ethnic or racial politics being articulated,
at this stage it could be pointed out that the different interpretations set out
above (each based on emphasizing different elements of the song) would each
attract very different judgements. But my hope is that scratching the surface
of the song in this way will start to reveal the limitations of and propose al-
ternative orientations to the desire to judge, celebrate, or denounce the song
according to its ‘racial politics’.
Rather than declaring a judgement at this point, it seems more valuable to
pause to consider a wider issue relating to the question of how we orientate our
cultural analyses in general. Meaghan Morris once importantly challenged
the tendency for works within film, media, and cultural studies to proceed
by simply taking a popular cultural text (such as this song, for example) and
treating it as the guilty stand-in for one or another wider social problem (such
as racism, for example), and to organize the analysis of it in terms of coming to
a judgement about whether or not it is ethico-politically good or bad (Morris
2001). Rey Chow once went even further and proposed that such orientations
sometimes reveal what she called ‘the fascist longings in our midst’—the de-
sire to cleanse the world of all but the positions with which we explicitly claim
to agree (Chow 1998).
This is not to say that in our explorations of culture, society, the present mo-
ment, its historical genealogy, and cultural products, values, and practices, we
should jettison any attention to the ethical and political issues of class, gender,
ethnicity, and so on, as they emerge within texts and contexts. But moralism,
‘policework’ (Rancière 1998) and judgmentalism need not be the defining
characteristics of our labours (W. Brown 2001). In what follows, I hope to
tease into visibility the value of alternative questions and approaches.
Seeing Sense
For the moment, let us stick to our interrogation of the racial ‘politics’ of this
song. I have so far painted it as perhaps less racist than it may sometimes seem
to some. But we have not yet finished our exploration of its racial, ethnic, or
cross-cultural dynamics. Other textual elements still need to be taken into
account. For instance, it is not only the lyrical but also the visual register of
the song that demands attention. To move from the lyrics to the visuals may
seem like a surprising step, especially given that we have not yet dealt with the
song’s musical features. But in terms of the reception of the song, particularly
in Britain, it should be noted that it gained enormous literal and metaphorical
visibility when it was performed on BBC TV’s long running and (at the time)
prime-time and peak-ratings chart music programme, Top of the Pops. It is
from these appearances that the various music videos currently available on
platforms such as YouTube have been retrospectively constructed.
Important here is the fact that on any viewing of any one of these perform-
ances, it is plain to see that Carl Douglas is not white. In fact, Douglas is a black
Jamaican-born British singer, who culturally cross-dresses in vaguely Chinese
costume for the performance. This particular collection of elements may con-
fuse certain expectations and evaluative schema. If this is racism, it is not
simply white against non-white. Nonetheless, any kind of cultural parodying,
such as, in this case ‘yellowface’ contra Asian cultures and ethnicities, can def-
initely be regarded as problematic, at best (Ma 2000; Morris 2001; Hunt 2003;
Chong 2012). Consequently, Carl Douglas’s ‘cultural cross-dressing’ might be
regarded with some unease.
However, in a rare and influential discussion of the song and its cultural
context, Bill Brown reads Douglas’s cultural cross-dressing as making refer-
ence to an instance of a wider, exciting, and potentially culturally transform-
ative ‘cross-ethnic identification’—something that was initiated by the kung
fu craze, and that unsettled traditional structures of both racial identification
and racism. Simply put, when both whites and blacks are identifying with and
participating in ‘Asian’ culture, the organizing lines of embedded racial bias

structures would seem to be undergoing a challenge (B. Brown 1997; Bowman
2010b). Moreover, in terms of the accusation of ‘cultural cross-dressing’, it de-
serves to be noted that Douglas and his dancers do not pretend to be ethnically
Asian. Nor do they ridicule it. The costumes in themselves do not seem to be
intended to be funny. Rather, they simply wear Asian-looking martial-artsy,
uniform-style outfits to emphasize the Chinese theme of the song, in a very
blatant way.
Before denouncing this out of hand, it may be pertinent to note that this
kind of cross-dressing is, in essence, done by everyone who trains in a ‘tra-
ditional’ Asian martial arts club and either chooses or is obliged to wear
a ‘traditional’ uniform to class. Reflecting on whether this convention of
cultural cross-dressing in martial arts clubs might be ethnically or racially
problematic can offer one way of recasting the question of whether the cul-
tural cross-dressing of the performers of this song is racist. Certainly, if
wearing clothes associated with another culture is deemed problematic in
some contexts, one ought to be able to specify what makes it acceptable in
others. Put differently: if there is sometimes a problem with ‘dressing up’,
then what is it that stops this problem always arising whenever anyone
dresses in the clothes of another culture, race, or ethnic group? Unless we
can establish a satisfactory answer to this question, then we risk occupying
a position that is essentially culturally separatist or aligned with a kind of
cultural apartheid.
There are several ways to navigate the waters opened up by these kinds of
questions. My own proposition is to start by arguing that it is not merely the
black or white Westerner who is in some sense performing a different cultural
identity when dressing up in traditional or non-traditional Asian clothing. It
is also the ethnically Japanese karateka or ethnically Chinese kung fu student
who is doing so whenever they don the ‘traditional’ attire of the dojo or kwoon.
In many respects, even the ‘ethnically correct specimen’ (Chow 2002) who
dons the robes of ‘their own’ culture is effectively play-acting or performing.
This is because all cultural identity is performative, not innate (Butler 1990).
Identities are constructed through rituals, codes, and conventions—from
those as visible as learning a tea ceremony to those as barely noticeable as the
way we eat, wash, walk, or dress (Mauss 1992; Bourdieu 1979). They are all
at root invented and performed, even if, over time and through familiarity,
they come to seem natural or inevitable. To hold that it is somehow right, nat-
ural, or proper for, say, a Japanese person to wear formal, national, or tradi-
tional Japanese clothes, but wrong, unnatural, or improper for a Westerner to
do the same, whether in a similar or a different context, is to indulge in a line
of thinking that is perfectly aligned with ethnocentric, stereotype-organized,

cultural apartheid (Chow 2002; Arditi 2008; Bowman 2013c; 2017a).
This is to suggest that there may be no inherent problem with any instance
of dressing up, even if it might always possibly be subversive in one or another
way (Butler 1990; Maor 2019). Of course, to say this is to make a universalizing
statement, which could lead to an incorrect conclusion. It is both correct and
incorrect to say there is ‘no inherent problem’ because whilst all culture is con-
structed, this overlooks the fact that every particular context and culture will
have very precise structures and strictures governing who can say or do what,
in which ways, how, why, and when. As Meaghan Morris points out:
Indigenous Australians, for example, do not want to ‘share’ some traditional de-
signs and stories because unlike white people who want to use them to decorate
tea-towels or tourist ads they have a cosmology in which not all knowledge is
common property and some knowledge is secret as well as sacred to very specific
local groups.
(Morris and Bowman 2018, 218)
Moreover, she notes, acts or events that may to some parties or perspectives
appear to be fun, frivolous, non-serious, or totally fine can easily appear to
other parties or perspectives as deeply troubling; because they may relate to
‘complex situations of “cultural difference” where histories of colonialism and
geo-political conflict are [ . . . ] often structuring the context in which an ex-
change [ . . . ] takes place’ (218). In terms of her example of the situation and
relationships between European Australians and indigenous Australians, ‘By
beginning to learn about this [complex history of cultural difference], more
Australians begin glimpsing the incompleteness of our own understanding
of what has happened between us over two centuries of brutal colonialism’
(218–219). Clearly, then, there can quite easily be problems associated with
cultural cross-dressing or cross-performing. But how does one adjudicate on
this matter? Consider the following case.
Cultural (Con)Fusion
In Britain in April 2011, the national press and TV news reported the arrest
of a pub entertainer called Simon Ledger, for allegedly performing ‘Kung Fu
Fighting’ in a manner that was in some sense ‘at’ or ‘about’ a Chinese audi-
ence member or passer-by (Daily Mail 2011). In other words, the accusation
was that the performance of this song was deliberately calculated as a form
of what British law terms ‘racially aggravated’ abuse. Inevitably, commenta-

tors emerged, denouncing this as ‘political correctness gone mad’ (Littlejohn
2011). Carl Douglas himself was even called upon by the Daily Mail to defend
the song, which he did passionately, calling the song a widely liked fusion of
Western and Eastern cultures (Kelly and Fryer 2011).
Whether or not the song is indeed a ‘fusion of East and West’ is a matter to
which we will return. The question for now is whether or not the performance
of the song had racist intent. As we have seen, a large amount of the lyrical
textual evidence suggests that this song is apparently celebrating kung fu. The
lyrics even seem to want to educate listeners, telling us—in the most respectful
of ways—that kung fu is ‘an ancient Chinese art’ and that skilled practitioners
have ‘expert timing’. The most potentially negative lyrical elements involve the
use of terms like ‘China men’ (rather than ‘Chinese men’)—although they are
given what seems to be the intentionally complimentary adjective ‘funky’ (the
phrase is ‘funky China men’). Compliments can, of course, be patronizing;
even intentionally or unintentionally demeaning.
Another potential negative connotation is the phrase, ‘Here comes the big
boss’. This phrase arguably introduces the idea that this may be some kind of
gang or triad situation; giving an extra possible reason for it all being ‘a little bit
frightening’. (Of course, the song only directly juxtaposes the narrator’s state-
ment of slight fear with the fact that the ‘kids were fast as lightning’). However,
in 1974, the phrase ‘the big boss’ would have been much more strongly con-
nected with what was at that time the very recent Bruce Lee blockbuster, The
Big Boss (Lo 1971). In the context of the lyrics, the phrase seems best under-
stood as a convenient term to serve two purposes: first, to refer to the person
in charge (whether that be the organizer, instructor, manager, or other kind of
boss); and second, to evoke the then popular film, The Big Boss. This kind of
quick, shorthand evocation of the wider martial arts intertext is a consistent
technique of the lyrics throughout the song, many of which refer directly, lit-
erally, and synecdochically to key features of the then emergent cultural re-
pository of martial arts images.
In sum, on the basis of the textual evidence provided by the lyrics, it seems
clear that whatever the intent of the composers of ‘Kung Fu Fighting’ (if the
composers even had an intent that was any more conscious or precise than the
desire to compose a song), any such intent was evidently celebratory, rather
than hostile to the ‘ancient Chinese art’ and ‘everybody’ associated with kung
fu fighting, including the Chinese.3 But this does not mean that the song
3 Words are by Carl Douglas and music is by Biddu, an Indian composer, then resident in London. For an
interesting account of the composition of the song, see: Superseventies.com n.d.

could not be redeployed, recontextualized, or ‘reterritorialized’ to achieve a

different effect, as was perhaps the case with Simon Ledger’s performance in
2011. As anyone knows who has ever witnessed crowds of football supporters
chanting before and during a match, to sing a song at someone is very dif-
ferent to singing a song for someone. In other words, context is everything.
The affects and effects of the performance of a song can be determined by
and/or determining of the characteristics of a context (Gregg and Seigworth
2010). In terms of effect, affect, meaning, significance, and ‘force’, the context
of something’s deployment arguably trumps the internal content or features
of any text itself. Perhaps this applies particularly to songs. Certainly, the most
loving ballad can be retooled and redirected by a hostile group as a device
to bully someone. A group singing Stevie Wonder’s ‘Isn’t She Lovely’ at an
isolated individual in the classroom or playground is unlikely to be compli-
menting that person or trying to make them feel good. Police or military units
blasting music into a compound or cell are unlikely to be trying to soothe or
cheer up their suspects or prisoners.
This might be illustrated further, in a different way, by reference to lan-
guage conventions: European languages such as French and Italian have both
formal and informal forms. In French, there is the formal ‘vous’ form and
the informal ‘tu’ form. Both ‘tu’ and ‘vous’ mean ‘you,’ but ‘tu’ is intimate, ca-
sual, and informal, while ‘vous’ is more formal and is used either to address
a group of people or to maintain a polite and respectful distance from or re-
lationship with someone. Language teachers often advise that, if in doubt,
it is best to avoid the risk of seeming to be impolite, and to use the ‘vous’
form until the person you are talking with explicitly gives you permission
to use the informal ‘tu’ form. In other words, the ‘tu’ form is more personal,
friendly, and intimate. However, it is also potentially the most offensive. One
needs to have secured tacit or explicit agreement that it is acceptable. It is cer-
tainly not acceptable in all contexts—indeed, in some contexts it is absolutely
unacceptable. As a phrasebook I once read warned travellers, if a stranger
comes up to you and addresses you in the ‘tu’ form, this may in itself be cause
for concern—it may be evidence of hostility, condescension, disrespect, and/
or aggression.
Ultimately then, this or any other song may or may not become racist,
depending on the context and power dynamics of its performance. My sense
is that lyrically, in intent, and in many contexts of its reception, it was and is
not intentionally racist. Of course, this may not be enough. A lack of nega-
tive intent does not mean an absence of negative consequences. Not knowing
what the speed limit is and not intending to break it does not mean that you
have not broken the law by driving faster than it.
There are still further elements to be examined. So far, we have only looked
at the lyrics, certain key visuals (Trausch 2018a), and some elements of con-
text, in terms of the initial historical context of the song and in terms of the
case of a more recent problematic performance.
Readers may be interested to know that the charges against Simon Ledger
were dropped by police due to lack of evidence.
Sound Effects and Affects
Of central importance to any song, and therefore also the analysis of it, is the
music, and the musical sounds within it. Some of the most memorable sounds
that are musically and rhythmically deployed within ‘Kung Fu Fighting’ are
those that seem to seek to make connotative or metonymic associations with
China and martial arts training, especially the oriental-sounding ‘hooks’ and
the kiai-like grunts and ‘ha’ sounds of the singer and backing singers. Most
memorable here are the singer’s opening call of ‘Oh, ho-ho, ho!’ and what is
sometimes called the ‘oriental riff ’ that structures the song—what Nilsson re-
fers to as ‘the musical cliché figure signifying the Far East’ (Nilsson n.d.).
The ‘Oh, ho-ho, ho!’ that opens the song is rendered as an echoing sustained
sound that straddles the supposed line between words and music. The ‘oh’
sounds are not semantic in the sense that ‘oh’ can sometimes be used as a word
with precise signified meanings, from shock to realization to disappointment,
and so on. Rather, in this use, ‘oh’ is principally working as a musical sound,
equivalent to humming or clicking one’s fingers. Yet, although music is argu-
ably the art form that least possesses or requires a literal denotative meaning,
it is clear that this song’s opening sonorous ‘Oh, ho-ho, ho!’ is part of the crea-
tion of a connotative effect (or affect).
This opening vocal sequence actually has many of the features of a call, to
which there is a corresponding response. This vocal call is made up of a series of
four sounds. It immediately attracts the instrumental response of the ‘oriental
riff ’ (Nilsson’s ‘musical cliché figure signifying the Far East’). Being rendered
with an echoing sustain, the opening call of the song has the status of a kind of
yodel, or a call into a mountainous or cavernous landscape. The ‘oriental riff ’
response clarifies that the echoing landscape evoked here is one located in the
Far East. The lyrics go on to confirm that it is evidently connected with China.
The oriental riff here has the sense of a response to the four-syllable call (‘oh,
ho-ho, ho’) because together they form a complete musical phrase. According to
Nilsson, all variants of the oriental riff open with four notes of the same pitch, and
the one in question is no different. After those first four notes, the riff in ‘Kung
Fu Fighting’ descends, before returning back up slightly on the last pitch. The
call’s rising melodic contour invokes the descent of the response, calling on the
oriental riff to give sound to an Asian imaginary through antiphony. Although
the vocal call precedes the oriental riff in this song, it is the riff itself that is his-
torically and conceptually prior: Nilsson’s research has revealed that the riff is
a sonic cliché that derives from nineteenth-century performances of Aladdin
pantomimes and shows, one that has been used in the West to signify ‘China’,
‘Asia’, or ‘the Orient’ since at least 1847 (Nilsson n.d.; ‘Interrogasian’ 2010).
Interestingly, Nilsson notes that despite apparently already feeling familiar
or well known when it occurred in ‘Kung Fu Fighting’, for quite some time,
music researchers could not actually identify any earlier uses of the riff than
its occurrence in this very song. It took time to unearth its theatrical and pan-
tomime origins and lineage. In theatre and pantomime, the oriental riff came
to be a cliché used to signal either a Chinese or Eastern location, the entrance
of a Chinese character, or the occurrence of an ‘oriental’ event. Subsequently, a
series of other clusters of its occurrence in other media began to come to light,
such as several 1930s American cartoons in which the riff was used to ac-
company Chinese characters and events. Needless to say, in both pantomime
and cartoon occurrences, both the riff and the scenarios depicted were over-
whelmingly stereotyping and/or overtly racist (Nilsson n.d.).
This history suggests that ‘Kung Fu Fighting’ consciously or unconsciously
(one suspects, unconsciously) resurrected and reinvigorated an essentially
and ineradicably orientalist construct (Said 1978). Since this prominent use
in 1974, the riff has appeared in a range of prominent and lesser-known pop
songs, by artists including Rush, The Vapors, David Bowie, Souxsie and the
Banshees, King Kurt, and others. It also featured within the computer game
Super Mario Land, as well as within at least one Japanese anime, in associa-
tion with a Chinese character. In each of these reiterations of the riff, its affects
must be regarded as related to each other, yet differing—like different pieces
of cloth flapping individually in the wind on the same piece of cord. The riff
itself, as a kind of enduring cultural ‘meme’ or discrete cultural ‘fragment’ or
‘bit’ (Bowman 2013a; G. Hall 2002) may in many respects remain ‘the same’ (or
similar), but its effects—and affects—can differ enormously. To illustrate this,
let us consider just one reiteration of the oriental riff in a different pop song.
Turning Japanese
In a study of ‘oriental style’ in Western cinema, Jane Park mentions in an aside

that the use of the oriental riff in the 1980 hit single ‘Turning Japanese’ by
British band The Vapors is an element that contributes to making the song
into a straightforwardly racist text (Park 2010; ‘Interrogasian’ 2010; Hoban
2008). This is essentially because in ‘Turning Japanese’, the riff is combined
with lyrics that associate the narrator’s claim, ‘I think I’m turning Japanese’
with some kind of obsessive and clearly negatively marked psychotic, or re-
putedly even masturbatory, delusion.
Various videos of or for the song circulate online, including several self-
declared ‘official videos’. All of these videos are full of largely negatively marked
images of ‘the orient’—images that are in one sense random, yet in another
sense overdetermined. These include clips ranging from footage of Japanese
kamikaze attacks on American naval ships to clips of Jackie Chan in Hong
Kong movies juxtaposed with scenes from places that look more like Vietnam
than Japan, as well as many pieces of footage from China and Korea—all sup-
posedly somehow signifying ‘Japanese’. The deeply problematic character of
these ‘random’ snippets suggest that they are overdetermined, in that they
lump all kinds of images of Asian countries and cultures into a mishmash that
suggests ignorance of and disinterest in any kind of correctness or precision.
Given that such videos are not likely to have been created by the band it-
self or any of their representatives, it is reasonable to regard at least the visual
combinations within and compositions of these video texts as having been
constructed by fans (qua interpreters), rather than the writers of the song.
These ‘fan-produced’ videos amount to performative interpretations, if not of
the literal meanings of the words of the song, then at least of a playing around
with or within a perceived connotative range of cultural associations.
Blogger Jon Kutner claims to have been told the intended meaning of the
lyrics of ‘Turning Japanese’. He takes readers through a range of popular in-
terpretations of the song, seeking to refute them, based on the evidence of
testimony rather than hearsay, imagination, projection, or certain modes of
reading the lyrics. As he puts it, ‘Ill-informed journalists and trivia-writers
have long since passed on the “fact” that it’s about masturbation because
“Turning Japanese” refers to the Oriental facial expression people pull at the
moment of climax whilst holding your sausage hostage. Actually it isn’t about
that at all’ (Kutner 2014). After rejecting other popular interpretations, such
as the notion that the band were either interested in Japan at the time or re-
garded Japan as especially peculiar, he writes:
[Singer] Dave Fenton explained in an interview about the title, ‘It could have been
Portuguese or Lebanese or anything that fitted with that phrase, it’s nothing to do
with the Japanese. It’s actually a love song about someone who had lost their girl-
friend and was going crazy over it. The title is just all the clichés about angst and
youth and about turning into something you didn’t expect to.’ Early guitarist, Rob
Kemp, who left before the band became successful, added, ‘A lot of David’s lyrics
were about failed relationships.’ David continued, ‘There’s this boy sitting in his
room with just a photograph of the girl that had just left him and feeling very empty.’
He must have had all these emotions going on that he could have felt like he was
turning into a different person. This person was obviously so hurt about losing the
girl that not only did he want a picture, he wanted a doctor to take an x-ray picture
so he could look at her inside as well. Probably going a little bit too far but when in
that situation, and most of us have been at some time or other, we do strange things.
(Kutner 2014)
The fact that the song opens with (and several times repeats) the oriental
riff does, however, weaken the claim that it ‘could have been Portuguese or
Lebanese or anything that fitted with that phrase, it’s nothing to do with the
Japanese’. But, if there is any truth to the claim that the song was about ‘turning
into something you didn’t expect to’, then the choice of ‘Japan’ (to evoke some-
where ‘more foreign’ than Portugal and more well-known or more frequently
referenced in British popular culture than Lebanon), along with the catchy
and recently successful oriental riff (as something widely understood to be
shorthand for East Asia) comes to make more sense. Indeed, it arguably or
possibly both explains and mitigates the choice of ‘Japanese’ as the culture
evoked. This is because the historical status of East Asian cultures as the most
foreign of foreign cultures within European and Euro-American discourses
is certainly widely remarked upon. Moreover, the idea that Japanese popular
culture is bizarre and eccentric remains strong in all kinds of Western texts
and contexts to this day (Jones 2019).
Rather than presuming to be able to decide definitively which of the most
popular interpretations of the ‘meaning’ of the song is the ‘one correct inter-
pretation’, it is more rewarding to think through some of their implications.
Let us start with the masturbatory interpretation: the idea that the narrator is
looking at one or more picture and masturbating so frequently that he fears
the facial expressions he pulls prior to and during orgasm may become set
as his permanent facial features. To associate such expressions with ‘looking
Japanese’ is definitely part of a racist orientation. So, if the narrator is saying
this, then he is definitely participating in racist discourse. However, if he is
saying such a thing, then he is also saying, in no uncertain terms, that he him-
self is, to put it bluntly, a total wanker. In British English parlance, there are
perhaps few greater insults. A wanker is a useless person. In effect, what this
means is that it would not matter what such a person said or thought. Their
opinions and words would be inherently self-negating and self-refuting.
Next is the interpretation that proposes that ‘I think I’m turning Japanese’
is being used in the song to mean ‘I think I am going mad.’ This interpreta-
tion, too, is culturally stereotyping and stigmatizing, without a doubt. Also,
in this case, there is a similar logic to that activated by the masturbatory in-
terpretation: of what value are the words of someone who doubts their own
sanity? Nonetheless, a problem resides here, given that the use of ‘Japanese’ to
signify ‘mad’, ‘eccentric’, ‘obsessive’, and/or other such negative terms remains
irreducibly problematic. Yet, as already noted, the fact is that such a view of
Japanese culture is intelligible within anglocentric discourses and values. This
is because, from the time of the Second World War, the image of Japan was
marked by the figure of the kamikaze pilot, and this in turn was mapped onto
the figure of the samurai, who would unquestioningly kill or commit seppuku
whenever a complex code of honour demanded it (Benesch 2016). More re-
cently in Western popular cultures, Japan has become more and more regu-
larly depicted as a culture of eccentricity par excellence. In other words, in this
interpretation, and very crudely put, perhaps the explanation (if not the justi-
fication) of this interpretation could boil down to the phrase, ‘I’m only saying
what you are thinking.’ In this interpretation, ‘Turning Japanese’ involves a
very conventional and widely accepted form of Anglo- or Euro- racial and cul-
tural stereotyping (Jones 2019).
Finally, there is the interpretation based on the idea that the songwriters
were especially interested in Japanese culture. This interpretation holds less
water, although it should be noted that an interest in something can be posi-
tively or negatively marked. Racists might be said to exhibit an excessive in-
terest in other ethnic groups (Žižek 2001). But, a phrase like ‘is interested in’
tends to be read as meaning ‘likes’. And an embryonic liking for something can
involve making all kinds of faux pas, or can involve embracing any number of
stereotypes.
To give just a few examples and anecdotes: Korean colleagues and friends
of mine have recounted how they have taken offence at (or regarded with pity
or contempt) strangers who have enthusiastically but ignorantly said to them,
‘ni hao’ (which is Chinese for ‘hello’—literally, ‘you good’). I have heard other
colleagues propose that it is culturally offensive when Western yoga enthusi-
asts greet each other with the word ‘namaste’. Many people could be offended
or embarrassed if a white Westerner wore a Fu-Manchu outfit and bowed
at strangers—especially, perhaps, Chinese strangers. I myself recall feeling
deeply uncomfortable watching British comedian Marcus Brigstocke perform
‘Kung Fu Fighting’ on the fund-raising charity variety programme Let’s Dance
for Comic Relief in 2011. (These feelings returned as I located and watched the
act again on YouTube while writing this passage: BBC n.d.) And I myself have
sat with colleagues from Japan, watching karate classes in England, feeling
embarrassed at the odd simulation not only of an imagined Japan, but also of
ersatz Japanese terminology, used badly, grammatically incorrectly, yet none-
theless reverently, sincerely, and even lovingly. (We return to these consider-
ations in Chapter 9.)
Indeed, if we flip the perspective, perhaps each culprit in each of these
anecdotes—those whom we might deem guilty of orientalism at best or
racism at worst—was motivated solely by interest and enthusiasm. I myself re-
call that when I first started training in taekwondo in my teen years, I quickly
became so absorbed by it all that it became extremely hard to stop myself
bowing to older or senior people in everyday life. It must be noted that bowing
is largely non-existent in British everyday life. But my investment in the prac-
tices and rituals of taekwondo classes was transforming my behaviours—or
threatening to do so. Finally, to my eternal embarrassment, I must confess
that I also once went to an ‘F’ themed fancy-dress party (‘F’ because the party
was for someone’s fortieth birthday, and forty begins with F), dressed as Fu-
Manchu. (My excuse is that I had wracked my brains for ‘F’-related ideas that
could translate into easily intelligible costumes, and this was the best I could
come up with. However, I also remember viewing with distaste and contempt
the two men who had come dressed awfully as ‘Filipino Stick Fighters’ . . .)
I will say nothing about the rock band I was once a member of, which was
called Grasshopper.
As Edward Said’s trailblazing study, Orientalism (Said 1978), showed
clearly, having an interest in something, liking it and even living one’s entire
life in one or another sense working on, with, or for it, or being devoted to it,
is not simply an innocent, neutral, or straightforwardly positive relation. The
Other to which one is devoted may always possibly be an entity of one’s own
imaginative invention (Said 2000). Rey Chow once combined Said’s theory
of orientalism with Jacques Lacan’s reflections on identity and desire in an
analysis of the film M. Butterfly to propose that desire (maybe also love, but
certainly desire) always involves some kind of fantasy projection and misrec-
ognition (Chow 1998; Bowman 2010c; 2013b; 2017a).
Having an interest in, being enthralled by, being excited by, and so on, can
easily and frequently, if not necessarily always, involve deeply problematic
projections, misrecognitions, and fantasies. By contemporary standards, in
the wake not only of academic critiques of orientalist practices and the devel-
opment and spread of postcolonialist perspectives, but also metropolitan and
intellectual political correctness, along with wider social and political mul-
ticulturalism, it can be stated with certainty that it would definitely be better
to avoid the oriental riff, simply because it is a reductive stereotype with a
problematic history. Yet, as part of that history, Carl Douglas’s use of it can
certainly be appraised as being comparatively less negatively marked than
other instances, such as ‘Turning Japanese’. This is not to say that it could not,
will not, and has not ‘become racist’, depending on the context of its occur-
rence, or even deployment. Nor is it to suggest that it does not have a problem-
atic pre-history or that it has been constructed from stereotyping, orientalist,
or even racist musical, visual, and lyrical building blocks.
Indeed, despite Carl Douglas’s own claims that the song represents a fusion
of Western and Eastern cultural elements, ‘Kung Fu Fighting’ can actually be
taken to exemplify an almost entirely internal Western discourse about the
East (Sandford 2003; Bowman 2010b). It references cultural otherness, other
cultures, cultural difference, or different cultures (China, ‘China-men,’ kung
fu, The Big Boss); it may even have been inspired by or be about a ‘cross cul-
tural encounter’ in the cultural ‘contact-zone’ (Pratt 1991) of a Chinese mar-
tial arts class; but it is not constructed from cross-cultural materials. It is not a
cross-cultural hybrid in and of itself. It is more like an advert for a destination
aimed at Western tourists, rather than something of or from that place itself
(Culler 1990). But this should not cause us to reject its cross-cultural poten-
tial, or its ‘openness to the other’.
Ultimately, rather than proceeding in a judgemental mode or mood, it
will be of more cultural and analytic value to consider the logic or signifi-
cance of this ‘folding’, wherein an iconic element—and evocative orientalist
stereotype—of European chinoiserie (the oriental riff) is folded into the tex-
ture of a song that went on to become so evocative of martial arts culture per
se. Whatever its origins, the ‘oriental riff ’ stuck; and whatever is folded into it,
‘Kung Fu Fighting’ itself has stuck. Let us consider further what other factors
may have been at play in enabling this.
Prime here is the fact that the song emerged at just the right time (with ‘ex-
pert timing,’ one might say), immediately in the wake of Bruce Lee and on the
crest of the wave of the kung fu craze. Not only was it in and of that moment
itself, it was also descriptive of its own cultural moment, and in a way passed
a kind of meta-comment on it. It also touched on and activated certain fan-
tasies, from orientalist ideas about Asian martial arts experts to the myth of
invincibility and the desire to become invincible, just like the idealized kung
fu experts of the song. But, crucially, also it emerged in just the right way: ex-
pressed through the then-radical new sound of disco. This new sound, how-
ever, was destined to become over time the very paragon of mainstream easy
listening.
Appraised briefly in terms of disco history, perhaps the light-heartedness
of this otherwise epochal song is part of the reason why folk memory tends
to overlook or downplay the status of it, regarding it more as a ‘novelty song’

than a ‘disco classic’. The canon or grand narrative of the history of disco and
its ‘classics’ tends to focus more on the subcultural sexual edginess of earlier
underground disco performers and to attribute the subsequent interna-
tional proliferation and popularization of disco with later performers, such as
Donna Summer and The Bee Gees. This is not to say that ‘Kung Fu Fighting’
is omitted or forcibly excluded from histories of disco. It is rather that it has a
status akin to that of many other songs that have brought a musical style into
the mainstream: once the immediate popularity of the breakthrough song
fades, it can become more or less universally regarded as ‘naff ’: as an inau-
thentic or insufficient ‘translation’ and ‘transformation’ of something suppos-
edly more ‘authentic’ (Bowman 2010c).
Finally, then, let us turn to the question of what all of this may have meant
and may continue to mean for the wider discursive status or cultural value of
martial arts within the popular cultural realms into which it intervened.
Fast as Lightning
On the basis of this analysis, I would propose that, inevitably, this cultural text
and the kind of enjoyment that it called for, could be said to put martial arts
discourse on a trajectory that ineluctably tended towards trivializing the sub-
ject matter. The song makes martial arts moves into fun and funny things to
do, which thereby transforms the song into a fun and funny thing to engage
with, in terms of singing and dancing. Reciprocally, therefore, this makes the
subject matter (kung fu fighting) trivial too.
Camp, kitsch, fun, funny, and something to be related to ironically, ‘Kung Fu
Fighting’ at once signalled, advanced, and consolidated the ‘mainstreaming’
of Asian martial arts within Western popular cultures, in a way that by the
same token trivialized them. Bill Brown’s seminal reading of ‘Kung Fu
Fighting’ regards this process as a ‘domestication’ and ‘defusing’ of what were
hitherto ‘dangerous’ cultural elements and ingredients—the polymorphous
and poly-cultural sexuality of the underground dance scene of disco, and the
cross-ethnic identification with foreign cultural practices such as kung fu, in
particular (B. Brown 1997). To this I would add that the aesthetic reconsti-
tution or reinvention of ‘kung fu’ carried out by the structure of the song, its
lyrics, and key visuals moved the cultural valuation of Asian martial arts onto
a different track—the track in part exemplified by the cartoon character Hong
Kong Phooey. As mentioned in Chapter 3, the cartoon, Hong Kong Phooey,
also emerged in 1974, and as every episode of this programme makes plain,
the black, working-class character who identifies with Chinese martial arts
and believes he has invincibility because of them is, quite simply, someone to
be laughed at.
But nothing is ever one thing. Things do not have singular unitary mean-
ings, identities, or uses. Things do not stay the same. The question is what
‘other destinies’ the discursive formation of martial arts in popular culture
had, other than orientalism and comedy. To examine this, we must look at the
post-1970s proliferation and dissemination of martial arts in popular culture.
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The Invention

Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press

© Oxford University Press 2021

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

1. Conceptual Foundations—The Invention of Martial Arts: Popular

2. Modernity, Media, and Martial Arts: From Beginning at

3. Martial Arts into Media Culture 57

4. Everybody Was Kung Fu Citing: Inventing Popular Martial

5. From Linear History to Discursive Constellation 99

6. The Meaning of Martial Arts 129

7. I Want My TKD: Martial Arts in Music Videos 145

8. Martial Ads 177

9. The Invention of Tradition in Martial Arts 193

10. Inventing Martial Subjects: Toxic Masculinity, MMA,

Conclusion: After the Invention 240

Introduction: Two Phrases in Communication

The phrase, ‘Everybody was kung fu fighting’ is remarkable. It is one of the

appropriation, ‘yellowface’ caricature, stereotyping, and possibly therefore

depicted as martial arts experts. Because of such apparently reductive stereo-

Significantly, however, in telling us about a situation ‘back then’, where eve-

participating in ‘Asian’ culture, the organizing lines of embedded racial bias

of thinking that is perfectly aligned with ethnocentric, stereotype-organized,

of what British law terms ‘racially aggravated’ abuse. Inevitably, commenta-

interesting account of the composition of the song, see: Superseventies.com n.d.

could not be redeployed, recontextualized, or ‘reterritorialized’ to achieve a

Sound Effects and Affects

In a study of ‘oriental style’ in Western cinema, Jane Park mentions in an aside

to overlook or downplay the status of it, regarding it more as a ‘novelty song’

Baudrillard, J. 1988. America. London: Verso.

Bowman, P. 2015. Martial Arts Studies: Disrupting Disciplinary Boundaries. London: Rowman

O’Shea, J. 2018c. ‘He’s an Animal’: Naturalizing the Hyper-Real in Modern Combat Sport’. In P.

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