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Releasing Masculinity for a More Just World: Lessons on How to “Be Water” in Hong Kong

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 April 2021

Charlie Yi Zhang Open the ORCID record for Charlie Yi Zhang [Opens in a new window]
Charlie Yi Zhang*
Affiliation:
Charlie Yi Zhang ([email protected]) is Assistant Professor of Gender and Women's Studies at the University of Kentucky.
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Abstract

This article develops a feminist reading of the biographical action series featuring Ip Man, the Wing Chun grand master lionized for mentoring Bruce Lee, as a set of culturally inflected practices in order to probe the sociohistorical structure that embeds and overdetermines these productions and allows for new, subversive potentialities. Building upon situated engagement, my analysis traces how the hypermasculine violent yanggang aesthetic tradition takes on new life by reclaiming women's voices in the Ip Man film franchise. I also identify the ways in which this filmic remaking of Ip's life story builds an alternative embodiment that unsettles musculature as the ground of colonialist/nationalist dominance and lays the basis for a new horizon of justice encapsulated by the flexible and elastic “Be Water” sensibility. As human beings are facing the common threat posed by prevailing toxic masculinity, these lessons, I argue, are crucial for us to find a path through the turbulence and build a more peaceful world.

Keywords

“Be Water” philosophyBruce LeeHong KongIp Manjusticemasculinity
Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Asian Studies , Volume 80 , Issue 3 , August 2021 , pp. 683 - 704
Copyright
Copyright © The Association for Asian Studies, Inc. 2021

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