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The amazing grace of Bruce Lee’s fight scenes

6 August 2022

9:00 AM

6 August 2022

9:00 AM

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

New York University Press, pp.326, 30

Kung Fu Monthly: The Archive Series Carl Fox

Pit Wheel Press, pp.484, 24.99

Fighting Without Fighting: Kung Fu Cinema’s Journey to the West Luke White

Reaktion, pp.294, 15.99

Early on in Enter the Dragon our hero, the acrobatic Kung Fu fighter Bruce Lee, tells a young pupil to kick him. Needless to say, the kid’s kick comes a cropper. ‘What was that?’, Lee sneers, clipping the lad’s ear. ‘An exhibition? We need emotional content, not anger.’

Even at 12, when I first read about this scene (in the poster magazine Kung Fu Monthly, whose first 26 issues are handsomely reproduced in Volume I of Carl Fox’s Archive Series), I thought it sounded like a load of chop suey hooey.

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