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

Charlie Yi Zhang
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.
Publication date
1 Jan 2021 – 31 Dec 2021
Journal title, volume/issue number, page range
The Journal of Asian Studies 80 no.3: 683-704.
ISSN
0021-9118
Specialisation
Humanities
Theme
Society
National politics
Media
Art and Culture
History
Gender and Identity