Cross-cultural communication （87）　

87) Asians in Hollywood movies
In the summer of 2019, I spotted a rather unusual advertising poster on the Osaka Metro while commuting to work. It simply said “Don't think. Feelcycle.” in English, and below that was a photo of an exercise bike, the kind you find in gyms. I could tell that it was an advertisement for exercise bikes, but I remembered hearing this line of English somewhere before. That's right! I remembered it. It's a famous line from Bruce Lee in Enter the Dragon. When Bruce is training his disciple, he asks him if he has mastered the technique. The disciple starts to say “I think...” but Bruce cuts him off and says “Don't think. Feel!” I still remember pronouncing the “feel” part as “feel” with a long “e”. So, no matter how you look at it, this advertising slogan must be a rip-off of the film's dialogue.

From the fact that I remembered Enter the Dragon, I started thinking about the success of Asian actors in Hollywood films. This is because the Hollywood film Crazy Rich, which was released in Japan in the autumn of 2018, became quite a topic of conversation because most of the actors, including the main character, were of Chinese descent. Even at the French language school I attend once a week in the evening, this movie was a hot topic. This movie is a comedy about the Chinese diaspora, who are achieving economic success in the US and around the world, against the backdrop of China's rise to become the world's second largest economy.

Therefore, it would not be an exaggeration to say that the movie was a hit due to China's tangible and intangible influence.
What about Bruce's Enter the Dragon? Even if you haven't seen the movie, I think there are not many people who don't remember the beauty of his slender, muscular body, his nunchaku skills, or his “achoo” battle cry. The movie was released in the US more than half a century ago, in the early 1970s. Bruce poured all his energy into this film. Although he did not serve as director, he took on the lead role and all of the acting direction (of course, mainly for the martial arts scenes). It is also said that he changed the story midway through at his insistence, and this caused some trouble. He died of an illness of unknown origin shortly after the filming wrapped up, having apparently exhausted all his energy and willpower. So, when Enter the Dragon was released in the US, its lead actor was already dead. Perhaps due to the shocking incident of the sudden death of the lead actor, the film was a huge hit, and it subsequently sparked a kung fu craze in Hong Kong, Japan and around the world. And even half a century later, in 2019, if you look on youtube you can see and hear his heroic figure from anywhere in the world, and his lines are even used in Osaka subway advertisements.

After all, it seems that Bruce Lee will be the number one Asian actor in Hollywood films for the foreseeable future.

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