Crippled warriors: masculinities and martial arts media in Asia

The kung fu craze of the 1970s was a transformative moment in the global representation of Chinese – and Asian – masculinities, redefining these in new, more affirmative ways. This essay explores the complex nature of the masculinities represented in it. To do so, it foregrounds the repeated motif – in cinema from Hong Kong but also across East Asia – of the disabled hero, which finds its echoes in a range of martial arts media texts today. These are placed in the contexts of the hegemony of Western, orientalist ideas of race and gender; the collision of these with the history of Chinese masculinities; and twentieth-century debates on the martial arts as a means of strengthening the nation and affirming its identity. Attending to both the specifics of Hong Kong / China and broader Asian experiences, the essay traces the evocation and use of these tropes in the 2018 Hindi film The Man Who Feels No Pain.

This is an Accepted Manuscript of a book chapter published by Routledge in Media, Culture and Social Change in Asia on 16 May 2022, available online: https://www.routledge.com/Media-in-Asia-Global-Digital-Gendered-and-...