فکر نکن، احساس کن: تعدیل مردسالاری چینی از طریق فیلم هنرهای رزمی

This article demonstrates representations of racialized speech styles of Chinese masculinities in popular wushu ‘martial arts films’. For the detailed analysis, I concentrate on four blockbuster films that represent general depictions of wushu heroes and their expected Chinese masculinities. By focusing on discursive practices employed in the films, such as the heroes’ reticence and use of formulaic or philosophical speech styles, in combination with visual arts, I discussed how these mediatizations index masculinity in ways that mesh with the audiences’ expectations for Chinese martial arts figures, as such figures have developed through mediatization.

Dominant ideologies concerning gender differences or ideas about masculinities and femininities have largely been treated as people’s commonsense matters in scholarly discussions within gender studies. Eckert and McConnell-Ginet (2003, p. 43) refer to this line of thought as naturalization. In their definition, naturalization refers to the process through which something comes not to require explanation. They link the idea of naturalization to Gramsci’s (1971) theory of hegemony (Eckert and McConnell-Ginet, 2003, p. 43), arguing that ‘the most effective form of domination is the assimilation of the wider population into one’s worldview,’ and ‘[h]egemony is not just a matter of widespread ideas but includes the organization of social life more generally.’ Agha (2011a, p. 164) claims that hegemonic ideas spread through mediation and mediatization because semiotic mediation is an ongoing process in social life that unfolds through linkages among semiotic encounters that yield multi-sited chains of communication (see also Agha, 2005a and Agha, 2005b). Mediation is like communication that links people or elements of society; it is a process that involves the exchanges of meanings and ideas (Agha, 2011a, Agha, 2011b, Jaffe, 2011, Johnson and Ensslin, 2007 and Scollon, 1998). Mediatization describes specially formalized types of communication/mediation, such as that which occurs through institutionalized means like news reports, political speeches, or press conferences. As part of an institutionalized process, mediatization involves all the representational strategies and choices of the production and editing of resources concerning language in the creation of media products such as text, image, and talk (Agha, 2011a, Agha, 2011b and Jaffe, 2011).

Movies inspired by martial arts once were enjoyed as local entertainments in Asia, especially in places where martial arts traditionally have been actively practiced. After Bruce Lee’s successful films in the 1970s, however, Asian martial arts films established themselves as a promising category of the action film genre in the global market (Teo, 2005 and Wong, 2005). In this article, I hope to have demonstrated representations of racialized speech styles of Chinese masculinities in popular martial arts films. For the detailed analysis, I focused on four blockbuster martial arts films from different generations—The Way of the Dragon (1972), Enter the Dragon (1973), Fearless (2006), and Ip Man 2 (2010)—that represent general depictions of wushu heroes and their expected Chinese masculinities. By focusing on discursive practices employed in the films, such as the heroes’ reticence and use of formulaic or philosophical speech styles, in combination with visual arts, 11 I discussed how these mediatizations index masculinity in ways that mesh with the audiences’ expectations for Chinese martial arts figures, as such figures have developed through mediatization. This paper also touched upon performed Chinese masculinities in comparison to western fighters’ masculinity in selected martial arts films. Although the physical strengths represented by wu ‘martial prowess, strength, mastery of physical arts’ may be the highpoint of martial arts films, good wushu fighters are also expected to have reached a high level of wen ‘cultured behavior, refinement, mastery of scholarly works,’ as both wen and wu are indispensable to norms of Chinese masculinities. Enlightenment within the wen-wu ‘cultural attainment–martial valor’ philosophy is treated as one of the highest possible achievements in martial arts films. The excerpts presented in the paper provide examples of the wen-wu philosophy in performance. For instance, the taciturn natures of the wushu heroes project the idea that masculine men should only speak when necessary, and the heroes’ philosophical speech styles emphasize their careful word choices as well as humbly demonstrating their beliefs. Their detached associations with women index wushu heroes’ strong self-control, as sexual or romantic relationships are secondary to the wen-wu philosophy. Carrying out their intentions to fight selflessly for yi ‘righteousness’ and honor is more important than having a relationship with a woman in the idealized Chinese masculinities in the films observed. All in all, the films represent specific characteristics of Chinese culture and practice to viewers, emphasizing ideals of race, gender, discourse patterns, and ideologies. In other words, linguistic and visual characteristics interact in films to help audiences conceptualize ideologies about the nature of Chinese ways of dealing with gender differences and their idealized expectations. These popular films start from the assumption that movie viewers are familiar with processes of mediatization, most likely from the media’s intertextual dispositions. That is, the linguistic and the visual representations performed in the films index seemingly authentic cultural memberships for the characters (see Bucholtz, 2003 and Jaffe, 2011).