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The Hero of the World or the Idol of China

Myung-suk Kim 1

1위덕대학교

ABSTRACT

Huo Yuanjia's posthumous tale was dramatized by Bruce Lee at 1972(The Fist of Fury), and by Jet Li at 1994(The Fist of Legend) and the lifetime story was dramatized by Jet Li at 2006(The Fearless). The framework of this film was made up of recursive structure; from the hero's separation to the hero's return. The hero's itinerary, as indicated by Buddhist trasmigrationism, can be considered as the recursive structure of personal life. The war narrative is useful in transferring the horror and hurt suffered by populace to China, the problem in the specific geographic category. Huo Yuanjia accomplishes the true collective identity(nationalism) by overcoming the finitude of death and accomplishing personal eternal life. Even though Huo Yuanjia lost the "small family" but he attained the "superfamily" which is linking person, family to nation. Hero made the audience meditate and reflect on the nation state by abandoning the romance with blind woman and accepting death with tragic beauty. The character of the beggar and mob representing Chinese people in this film, as Ah Q in Luxun's novel, ironically, was similar to the standpoint of colonialism historical science made by Japanese imperialists to rationalize and justify the colonial administration. There was no fraternity transcending nationalism or identity consciousness in Tianjin of the day, however, the director Ronnie Yu distorted the historcity of premodern society by distorting scamps to mass, the mass to nation. Huo Yuanjia had "nation state" in heart all the time, right in Tianjin whichi was one of the concession as Shanghai, in a way it was as good as under the reign of imperialism. China is a multiracial nation mixed up with Hua and Yi as always, therefore, the imagination of nation state through pursueing national identity―sinocentrism― inevitably begin to show its limit. It is only pursued by another totalitarian project of communist dictatorship. Besides, Huo Yuanjia identify "the I or we" through excluding and identifying "the other", this process involves a risk that can suppress the discrimination and exclusion in the nation state itself, and can discriminate the members each other by specific social category, that is to say, through the "guanxi(關係)" or faction. It is audiences' duty to judge whether the heromaking project of this film was due to the mass'es limit seeking hero, or due to the Chinese undeniable sinocentrism.

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