SLIDE: LATE 20TH CENTURY HISTORY
So before expounding on the wuxia new school as revived in the 1960’s, I’d first like to offer a little bit of socio-political context for the films in question.
Firstly, the Golden Age of Wuxia film had a brief overlap with a period of time known as The Great Leap Forward, in this time almost 45 million Chinese civilians died of both starvation and deliberate acts of violence on behalf of Mao’s regime. This is largely significant because this duration posed a very deliberate shift in aims on behalf of China and also served as a launching pad for the Wuxia revival.
In this time the intents and goals of an entire empire were brought into question by its people due to the extreme circumstances and hardships they were forced to suffer. This revitalization of wuxia tradition served to glorify the older Chinese traditions that had been left irrelevant in the communist party’s wake. Because of this, and the fear that this kind of glorification could potentially inspire insurrectionist attitudes, China continued to employ aggressive censorship methods well into the 80’s, and to this day maintains a position of final rule over acceptable film material distribution.
SLIDE 2: NEW SCHOOL WUXIA
Within the new school wuxia movement as perpetuated by the Shaw Brothers studio there were two directors in particular that stood out as particularly impactful on its direction with each presenting a unique school of thought with distinctly different motivations. The first is director Chang Cheh. Within his directorial career he was known as a major driving force in the representation of wuxia as a perpetuation of masculinity and a narrative tool towards the end of retribution. He was responsible for multiple installments in the One-Armed Swordsman series as well as Five Deadly Venoms, Five Shaolin Masters, Five Elements Ninjas, and a myriad of similar lesser known works. His films worked to offer an interpretation of wuxia as applicable to the power and unity to be found within a male devotion to the notion of brotherhood. This interpretation relied on a principle known as “Yang Gang” – meaning “a masculine hardness.”
This fixation on hyper-masculinity and the creative choice to embrace an embellishment of realistic scenarios as opposed to a foundation based in total fantasticality led to Cheh’s films becoming known for a grittier, bloodier, and more realistic grasp of martial-arts combat and wuxia representation as a whole. Cheh’s films were accompanied by an ideology of hyper-realism which is an artistic approach that is predominantly acknowledged as a postmodernist movement.
Alternatively, director King Hu had another vision entirely. Hu openly espoused a disregard for the realism of actual combat, rather he expressed that his roots within martial arts cinema stemmed from classical Chinese opera and subsequently that the choreography in his combat scenarios were inspired by Beijing opera acrobatics as opposed to any kind of real conflict. Theorist Stephen Teo imposed an argument drawing a relationship between Hu’s creative choices and a previously unprecedented grasp of vernacular modernism, stating: “The incorporation of Beijing Opera acrobatics made choreography a required aesthetic in Hu’s action sequences, which is the first sign of its modernity. Action becomes a matter of choreographing space as well as the actors.” Teo regarded Hu’s film “Come Drink With Me” as “The Seminal New School Wuxia Film” and argued that that the film “is suggestive of the anti-narrative structures of French new wave master Jean-Luc Godard, which was yet another sign of Hu’s modernity.” According to Teo “Hu always stressed that he knew nothing about the martial arts, and that he achieved his effects through a combination of opera and cinematic techniques.” Come Drink With Me has become universally regarded as not only one of the most influential features in the wuxia revival but also as one of the strongest narratives to perpetuate the trope of the female knight-errant.
Hu’s articulation of wuxia was distinctly different from Cheh’s approach as well as the Shaw Brothers studios as a whole. Hu’s departure from this standard explication of martial arts imposed a return to the fantastical and mystical components of Chinese history and folklore and sought to retain a position that focused on the magic, grace, and beauty to be found WITHIN strength as opposed to the brute force that is often symptomatic of it. This produced a vision of strength and power within cinematic representations of femininity in martial arts narrative that had been preceded by few and was never as successfully affected by any film before it. This also served to spawn the immensely successful career of the first major female star within Hong Kong cinema, Pei-Pei Chang.
Despite popular critical reception of the film, Hu’s approach came under heavy criticism from the studio, this finally culminated in Hu leaving the Shaw Brothers Hong Kong studio in order to join a smaller, less idealistically constrained studio in Taiwan. Cheh continued to bring the Shaw Brothers success for his more grounded approach towards presentation of martial arts although both directors continued to be incredibly influential throughout the golden age of wuxia and both continued to make immense contributions to the Golden Age of Wuxia as firstly an extension of honoring traditional Chinese ideals, secondly in repositioning classically established scenarios within a framework of modernity, and thirdly in bringing martial arts cinema as a whole to the forefront within both domestic and international audiences.