Bruce Lee Lives On!

My article from an old Media & Tech blog (September 6th 2011)

Bruce Lee is universally recognized as the pioneer who elevated martial arts in film to an art form, and this documentary will reveal why Bruce Lee's flame burns brighter now than the day he died over three decades ago. The greatest martial artists, athletes, actors, directors, and producers in the entertainment business today will share their feelings about the one who started it all.

We will interview the people whose lives, careers, and belief systems were forever altered by the legendary "Father of Martial Arts Cinema". Rarely seen archival footage and classic photos will punctuate the personal testimonials.

Word was that Bruce Lee had offended the masters of martial arts and that in response they administered Dim Mak on him: the ‘death touch.’ That’s what my T’ai Chi instructor shared with us. He never prompted us with ‘believe this or not,’ but simply to reflect on it. Arguably the most skilled, most popular martial artist of our time, Lee died on 20th July 1973 and he was only 32. Reports were that he had suffered a severe headache and died from an allergic reaction to a prescription painkiller.

This article is not about weighing the truth of either the Dim Mak or painkiller story. Rather, it’s to share a personal discovery and to reflect on something essential about our lives.

I was a university student in 1978, and loved a lot of things from philosophy and literature, to sports and weight training. I heard about ‘chi control,’ which was a kind of ‘mind over matter’ technique. I was drawn to it, because it was supposed to help me lift heavier weights in the gym. Off to the bookstore I went, looking to read up on it. Without blinking an eye, the clerk led me to a book by TT Liang: T’ai Chi Ch’uan for Health and Self Defense.

This book had absolutely nothing to do with weight lifting. It was a philosophical treatise by Master Liang on the ancient Chinese martial art, that is commonly translated as ‘supreme ultimate fist (or boxing).’ Philosophy aside, most people know it as a slow-moving exercise, which my instructor characterized as like ‘yoga in motion’ and ‘swimming in air.’ Intrigued by this unexpected discovery, I bought the book. What’s more, within two weeks, I saw a poster on campus about T’ai Chi classes being held near the university.

You see, there’s something fated about all of this. I’ve led a charmed life, by many accounts, growing up comfortably in a middle class, Filipino-American family in suburban Chicago and attending one of the best universities in the US. Still, at the cusp of adolescence and adulthood, I was full of uncertainty about the next steps in my life. So more than philosophy, health and self-defense, T’ai Chi gave me much needed ‘rootedness,’ ‘centeredness,’ and direction, which were in fact at the heart of its postures and movements. I’ve been at this for over 33 years now, and still loving it! T’ai Chi didn’t just change my life, but actually defined it in ways I couldn’t have imagined.

In a close knit circle of my instructor and classmates, I came to hear about Bruce Lee. He was one of many subjects I studied over the years, especially his book Tao of Jeet Kune Do. Scores of his notes and sketches on this uniquely-created martial art were collated into this book, posthumously. Jeet Kune Do is quite a different martial art from T’ai Chi, but the two share a philosophical heritage in Taoism. In brief, it’s about discerning the ways of nature and not veering away from it.

So what does all of this have to do with media and technology?

Well, let’s fast forward to 2011. A documentary on Lee’s life and family was yet another fine discovery on YouTube. Type in whatever subject interests you in its search box, and you have a host of free videos for your enjoyment and learning. I had read quite a scattering of articles, clips, and hearsay on him over the years, so much so that I got this strange feeling when I watched that documentary.

To me, Bruce Lee had always been alive! It’s easy enough to say that his legacy lives on, and it’s true enough as well. But that legacy is not an abstraction or a concept. It’s a reality that I (and many others) live, as it relates to Lee’s martial arts spirit, teachings, and films. Yes, I knew way back then that he had died. But somehow his death was irrelevant. His family, friends and fans speak to the terrible loss they felt, even years after he had died. The strange feeling I got was, ‘Oh, that’s right, he had died.’

I offer the idea that it was media and technology that kept Bruce Lee very much alive. Not just for me, but surely for scores of others. Accepting this idea, though, means looking at the very theme of my blog in its very basic essentials.

My instructor was a kind of spokesman for Lee, and our T’ai Chi classroom was truly a medium for us talking about him. The various texts I read, the photos I looked at, and the martial arts circles I was part of were all media for hearing and learning about him. Before YouTube, videos weren’t so readily available to people. But the advent of this online TV was one key innovation that changed the media and technology landscape and altered our lives forever. Until a few days ago, I hadn’t seen a documentary on Lee. I watched his famous film `Enter the Dragon entirely on YT, and poured over Jeet Kune Do videos. Finally, for years, I’ve judiciously kept notes and downloaded photos onto my Word journal, and this is yet another a medium for me through which Bruce Lee lives!

In the end, then, media isn’t just a channel through which information passes and communications emerge. Technology isn’t just a mechanism, either, for enabling that channel to work. Instead, media and technology is truly a place where life begins and happens and where anyone of us, if we stop to think about it, actually lives on.

Thank you for reading, and let me know what you think!

Ron Villejo, PhD