Review of 'Like Water: A Cultural History of Bruce Lee' by Daryl Joji Maeda

 

Daryl Joji Maeda, Like Water: A Cultural History of Bruce Lee  (New York: NYU Press, 2022), 336 pp.

 

Reviewed by Paul Bowman, Cardiff University

 

 

Bruce Lee died at 32 years old in Hong Kong on 20^th July 1973. He was the biggest box office star in Asia, a rising star in the West, and was on the verge of unprecedented international fame with the imminent release of his fourth martial arts film, Enter the Dragon, the first ever Hong Kong and American co-production. Nonetheless, almost thirty years later, the sports journalist Davis Miller noted, in the biography The Tao of Bruce Lee, that Lee was perhaps the most famous name of the twentieth century about whom we know the least. The irony is that this assertion was made in a publication on Bruce Lee that was itself one of an almost constant stream of publications on Bruce Lee that have appeared since his death. But the point was valid: Bruce Lee was extremely well-known, but only in a textual and not a biographical sense. His films, images, words and sounds were (and remain) staples of popular culture. But his biography was unclear. Hence interpretations of his cultural significance could really only be tethered to textual analysis of his film and television work, his writings and his martial arts legacy (or what others had made of that legacy).

 

In the two decades since Miller made his observation about the lack of serious research into Bruce Lee, a great deal has changed. The hagiography, myth-making and maintenance of 'Bruce Lee the legend' remain active enterprises across media and various forms of publication. In fact, Bruce Lee myth-peddling has demonstrably increased in recent years, as evidenced by the growth of a belated 21^st century interest in Bruce Lee in mainland China (as seen in numerous new TV series 'about' Lee), the development of Bruce Lee museums and cultural institutions in Hong Kong, the erection of monuments around the world, and of course the mythic beatification of Bruce Lee's kung fu teacher Ip Man in a growing series of dynamically fanciful films made by several different directors since 2008.

 

But, at the same time, over recent years, several trajectories of serious scholarship have forged new paths into the body of texts and tangles of ideas and arguments about Bruce Lee. Some of these are purely biographical, with Matthew Polly's 2018 book, Bruce Lee, A Life, standing as the ultimate achievement in that genre. Various others connect the textual Bruce Lee either to other texts (clarifying his borrowings from and contributions to film and media) or to cultural and political movements and changes more broadly (showing how Bruce Lee's ideas and images fed from and back into larger national, international and even global movements in history).

 

Daryl Joji Maeda's 2022 study, Like Water: A Cultural History of Bruce Lee (NYU Press) attempts to span much of this terrain, tying Lee's personal biography to both his immediate cultural context and broader movements in history, all the while developing a clear argument about his cultural significance. In this, Maeda's work is very satisfying. In reading it, I came to think of the work's two major strategies as juxtaposition and back-filling. In other words, biographical events in Lee's life are situated in the context of larger political, legislative, economic and historical movements and processes (juxtaposition), and information about almost all of the other names, characters and historical events connected with Lee is provided in abundance. I think of this as 'back-filling' because while so many of the names connected with Bruce Lee (family, friends, students, actors, writers, filmmakers, etc.) are now vaguely familiar by association, few biographers have thought to dig into these other characters' narratives. Maeda, however, back-fills all of this thoroughly, in order to produce a cultural history that is historically and biographically well-referenced, combined with academic interpretations of key aspects of Lee's film, television and writing – new readings that are developed in full light of the facts of his time and place.

 

In this respect, the work picks up the baton carried in the development of biographical knowledge about Lee by Matthew Polly, and links this with studies that emphasize Lee's importance for anti-racist, civil rights and postcolonial movements around the world, such as the works of Vijay Prashad and M. T. Kato. And this is the strength of Like Water: A Cultural History of Bruce Lee. For, in situating Lee in relation to certain currents of economic, political and military history in both the USA and Hong Kong, Maeda goes a long way to articulating precisely the possible connections between Bruce Lee and progressive cultural and political movements that so many other scholars, activists and fans have gestured to.

 

However, this strength is also its main weakness. For, there are at least two possible criticisms of Maeda's overarching approach. Firstly, like any cultural history, Maeda's narrative – rich and compelling as it often is – is necessarily selective. And Maeda's selection criteria cannot be disconnected from very contemporary debates. Accordingly, to echo a point made by Walter Benjamin in 'The Task of the Translator', Bruce Lee's cultural-political status is established by refracting it through or translating it into the concerns and terms of the now. All of which is arguably fine, as many of the cultural-political and civil rights struggles of Lee's era continue to this day. However, a second criticism is perhaps stronger. Namely, in advancing an argument about and an account of an ideologically progressive Bruce Lee, whose beliefs, actions and interventions are all to be regarded as resolutely cosmopolitan, anti-racist, egalitarian and ethico-politically principled, Maeda never pauses to consider any counter-narrative or alternative argument. Thus, Lee is always placed on what many scholars will inevitably regard of 'the right side' of history. No attention is given to the possible ways in which he could just as easily be interpreted as a kind of ideal proto-neoliberal subject, a jobbing entrepreneur, a self-help guru, a self-interested and self-serving individualist, an apolitical dedicated follower of fashion, or an unfaithful drug-abusing celebrity, for instance.

 

Far be it from me to suggest that any of these possible counter-arguments have a stronger claim on the truth. But they are all there. Furthermore, if Maeda wants to place the ethnically Chinese, Hong Kong raised, but American adult Bruce Lee positively within a genealogical narrative that culminates in Black Lives Matter today, surely it is equally reasonable to ask how this fast-car, fast-living, jet-setting film star might fare when appraised in terms of other, equally contemporary narratives, such as those that lead to #MeToo, #bodypositivity or indeed our current environmental crises, to gesture to only a few other contemporary concerns.

 

Nonetheless, Maeda's contribution is significant. The book is an easy and enjoyable read, but it is at the same time a major contribution our understanding of the biography, the context of the work, and the many culturally significant aspects of Bruce Lee, from his fight for fame to the nature of his contributions to film, popular philosophy and physical culture. As we approach the half century mark of Bruce Lee's definitive and almost simultaneous global entrance and physical exit from the world, it is good to see the coming together of so much biographical and cultural detail, so that, finally, students and researchers of film, media, ethnicity, culture, migration and martial arts can make an informed assessment of the importance and contributions of 'the Little Dragon' to contemporary transnational popular culture.

 

 

NB: The theme of the July 2024 conference of the Martial Arts Studies Research Network is 50 Years After Bruce Lee: Asian Martial Arts Onscreen and Off

 

MARTIAL ARTS STUDIES RESEARCH NETWORK
Podcast - Journal - Newsletter - Free Book - Talks