Today, the world awoke to the news that one of sport's greatest figures, the boxer Muhammad Ali, has passed away at the age of 74.
It is strange how the two names, Muhammad Ali and Bruce Lee, two men from very different backgrounds, have become intertwined in my imagination-- something that wasn't the case when I first started reading about the history of kung-fu.
For instance, it is common to come across strange stories like this diary blog in the London Review of Books by James Meek:
Similarly, the two are twinned by a bracket of biographical series, which ostensibly claim to be philosophical discourses on the nature of fighting by an author named David Miller titled The Tao of Muhammad Ali and The Tao of Bruce Lee (but on closer examination turn out to be autobiographies of some weirdo with a punching bag in his garage named David Miller; a common problem with American biography; you learn more about the author than the subject). Miller concerns himself with finding out who the "tougher" of the two was, tells us how tough he is, and in the end, dismisses Lee as a show-business man. For men like Miller, Muhammad Ali was the real deal.
It is hard to argue with the logic inherent in these judgements. Ali was a prize fighter, who won his reputation in the ring. Lee, on the other hand, when it came to competition fighting, contributed more as a coach (America's top karate and judo fighters worked with him to improve). Bruce Lee was, as Gene LeBell (a judo champion and an iconic Hollywood stuntman), an extraordinary showman but a showman, not a fighter.
Yet, Lee may have been principally an actor and a performer, but he regularly fought challenge matches. In the 1950s Hong Kong punk culture that Lee had grown up in, it was a way of life to thrash talk and back the talk with one's fists. It is a different matter that more often than not, people who come to martial arts exhibitions and challenge the demonstrator suffer from some sort of mental disorder, and rarely tend to be good fighters. Seasoned martial arts exponents who invite challengers know this quite well.
What connects the two is how much they have done for the spirit of diverse racial backgrounds and the cause of equality. It is through the examples of Ali and Lee that we are reminded never to judge a person by the colour of their skin.
One closer examination, however, we see an extraordinarily different approach to race in these two men.
I am convinced that Lee didn't really clock race. His upbringing in a conservative Chinese family in Hong Kong may have sensitised him to the idea of the racial superiority of the British and the Japanese races, but his family were outliers in Hong Kong society for many reasons. His father was a Buddhist opera star, while his mother was Catholic and half-German.*** So, Bruce Lee was a part Caucasian. This is why he made friends with people on the basis of them being people. Black, white, yellow-- it didn't matter to him.
[***Ed: A recent article suggests that Lee's maternal grandmother was English:
http://fightland.vice.com/blog/was-bruce-lee-of-english-descent]
Muhammad Ali, unfortunately, wasn't so lucky. He got enmeshed in some very nasty politics, particularly when it came to his conversion to changing his name from Cassius Clay to Muhammad Ali.
As part of his race activism and a spiritual crisis, Ali came under the influence of the Nation of Islam leader Elijah Muhammad. The Nation of Islam had more in common with Mormonism or Scientology (I just checked its Wikipedia entry to discover, to my bemusement, that the cult has been merged with Scientology): a typical American cult run for the financial and political benefit of its leaders rather than the spiritual needs of its adherents. It had nothing to do with the Koran, the religion of Islam, or even-- the humanity-- biryani. It was a scam that was aimed at a captive audience, African American men in jail (of whom there were and continue to be thousands at any given time).
The first man to be able to factually call out the Nation of Islam hoax was a man named Malcolm Little-- to you and me, Mr. Malcolm X.
His incredible haj to Mecca to discover genuine Islam remain the most riveting part of his autobiography (written with Alex Haley), The Autobiography of Malcolm X. It was under his influence that Cassius Clay first changed his name to Cassius X and then joined the Nation of Islam, changing his name to Muhammad Ali.
Malcom X's defiances of Elijiah Muhammad's authority did not without response. Elijah Muhammad excommunicated Malcolm X and ordered followers to disassociate themselves from him. X thought Ali would follow him out of the cult, but Ali truly believed that Elijah Muhammad was a prophet. So, when Malcolm X came to shake Ali's hand in public, he turned his back on him.
Later, after he had come to his senses and realised that the Nation of Islam was a fraudulent and criminal organisation, designed to cash in on American institutional racism, and maybe even working for the FBI, Muhammad Ali said he would regret his snub of Malcolm X to his last, dying day. Before he could apologise to Malcolm X, X was assassinated.
On the other hand, Bruce Lee whole life was a war against bad teaching. He always maintained, "the individual is more important than the system".
Muhammad Ali was the prize-fighter but Lee, clearly, had the brains. Yet, without Muhammad Ali, there would be no Bruce Lee.
There is one really remarkable thing about Bruce Lee which is not often spoken about: even though he was religiously agnostic, his fighting God was Muhammad Ali. He even dreamed of fighting him, one day.
Lee's favourite way of relaxing was to read a book and taking breaks to do push-ups while watching Muhammad Ali (and other) classic boxing matches. Lee was a school boxer himself and ended a British boy's three-year school championship reign. He loved Muhammad Ali's footwork, and hated Asian styles for their stilted lower body movement.
World culture was at a strange place when Bruce Lee was teaching Chinese philosophy to white and black American karate experts (who were adepts in what was essentially a peculiar Japanese martial art) -- but what he was actually teaching them were moves gleaned from studying Western fencing and boxing, particularly the videos of Muhammad Ali a.k.a Cassius Clay.
It is strange how the two names, Muhammad Ali and Bruce Lee, two men from very different backgrounds, have become intertwined in my imagination-- something that wasn't the case when I first started reading about the history of kung-fu.
For instance, it is common to come across strange stories like this diary blog in the London Review of Books by James Meek:
I went into another room where a young policeman slowly handwrote my statement, making no comment when, as I realised afterwards, a mnemonic I’d come up with long ago to help me remember the Russian words for parts of the body led to me describe, several times, how my passport had fallen out of my kidney. The room was bare apart from an old computer, a few desks and chairs and two printed-out pages taped to the wall, one with a picture of Mike Tyson, the other with a picture of Bruce Lee. Under Tyson it said: ‘When you’re on the way up your friends find out who you are. When you’re on the way down, you find out who your friends are.’(In Chisinau)
Similarly, the two are twinned by a bracket of biographical series, which ostensibly claim to be philosophical discourses on the nature of fighting by an author named David Miller titled The Tao of Muhammad Ali and The Tao of Bruce Lee (but on closer examination turn out to be autobiographies of some weirdo with a punching bag in his garage named David Miller; a common problem with American biography; you learn more about the author than the subject). Miller concerns himself with finding out who the "tougher" of the two was, tells us how tough he is, and in the end, dismisses Lee as a show-business man. For men like Miller, Muhammad Ali was the real deal.
It is hard to argue with the logic inherent in these judgements. Ali was a prize fighter, who won his reputation in the ring. Lee, on the other hand, when it came to competition fighting, contributed more as a coach (America's top karate and judo fighters worked with him to improve). Bruce Lee was, as Gene LeBell (a judo champion and an iconic Hollywood stuntman), an extraordinary showman but a showman, not a fighter.
Yet, Lee may have been principally an actor and a performer, but he regularly fought challenge matches. In the 1950s Hong Kong punk culture that Lee had grown up in, it was a way of life to thrash talk and back the talk with one's fists. It is a different matter that more often than not, people who come to martial arts exhibitions and challenge the demonstrator suffer from some sort of mental disorder, and rarely tend to be good fighters. Seasoned martial arts exponents who invite challengers know this quite well.
What connects the two is how much they have done for the spirit of diverse racial backgrounds and the cause of equality. It is through the examples of Ali and Lee that we are reminded never to judge a person by the colour of their skin.
One closer examination, however, we see an extraordinarily different approach to race in these two men.
I am convinced that Lee didn't really clock race. His upbringing in a conservative Chinese family in Hong Kong may have sensitised him to the idea of the racial superiority of the British and the Japanese races, but his family were outliers in Hong Kong society for many reasons. His father was a Buddhist opera star, while his mother was Catholic and half-German.*** So, Bruce Lee was a part Caucasian. This is why he made friends with people on the basis of them being people. Black, white, yellow-- it didn't matter to him.
[***Ed: A recent article suggests that Lee's maternal grandmother was English:
http://fightland.vice.com/blog/was-bruce-lee-of-english-descent]
Muhammad Ali, unfortunately, wasn't so lucky. He got enmeshed in some very nasty politics, particularly when it came to his conversion to changing his name from Cassius Clay to Muhammad Ali.
As part of his race activism and a spiritual crisis, Ali came under the influence of the Nation of Islam leader Elijah Muhammad. The Nation of Islam had more in common with Mormonism or Scientology (I just checked its Wikipedia entry to discover, to my bemusement, that the cult has been merged with Scientology): a typical American cult run for the financial and political benefit of its leaders rather than the spiritual needs of its adherents. It had nothing to do with the Koran, the religion of Islam, or even-- the humanity-- biryani. It was a scam that was aimed at a captive audience, African American men in jail (of whom there were and continue to be thousands at any given time).
The first man to be able to factually call out the Nation of Islam hoax was a man named Malcolm Little-- to you and me, Mr. Malcolm X.
His incredible haj to Mecca to discover genuine Islam remain the most riveting part of his autobiography (written with Alex Haley), The Autobiography of Malcolm X. It was under his influence that Cassius Clay first changed his name to Cassius X and then joined the Nation of Islam, changing his name to Muhammad Ali.
Malcom X's defiances of Elijiah Muhammad's authority did not without response. Elijah Muhammad excommunicated Malcolm X and ordered followers to disassociate themselves from him. X thought Ali would follow him out of the cult, but Ali truly believed that Elijah Muhammad was a prophet. So, when Malcolm X came to shake Ali's hand in public, he turned his back on him.
Later, after he had come to his senses and realised that the Nation of Islam was a fraudulent and criminal organisation, designed to cash in on American institutional racism, and maybe even working for the FBI, Muhammad Ali said he would regret his snub of Malcolm X to his last, dying day. Before he could apologise to Malcolm X, X was assassinated.
On the other hand, Bruce Lee whole life was a war against bad teaching. He always maintained, "the individual is more important than the system".
Muhammad Ali was the prize-fighter but Lee, clearly, had the brains. Yet, without Muhammad Ali, there would be no Bruce Lee.
There is one really remarkable thing about Bruce Lee which is not often spoken about: even though he was religiously agnostic, his fighting God was Muhammad Ali. He even dreamed of fighting him, one day.
World culture was at a strange place when Bruce Lee was teaching Chinese philosophy to white and black American karate experts (who were adepts in what was essentially a peculiar Japanese martial art) -- but what he was actually teaching them were moves gleaned from studying Western fencing and boxing, particularly the videos of Muhammad Ali a.k.a Cassius Clay.
Comments
Post a Comment