Bruce Lee Research Paper
8 November 2013
Bruce Lee
One of the most famous persons in the world has changed the way society perceives the use martial arts are of course Bruce Lee. Were we no longer limit ourselves to one style but multiple styles for various situations, and today we use these fighting styles in various action films. Bruce Lee is the most influential martial artist and action film star of the twentieth century. Now days we have a sport called MMA, mixed martial arts, if it wasn’t for Bruce Lee this might have would never existed as far as we know. “Jeet Kune Do, which translates into the way of the intercepting fist, and that, is the attitude you build your own style using whatever works for you that very thought right there is the corner stone …show more content…
of modern mixed martial arts” (Lazenby). Today, people in MMA are greatly influenced by Lee’s technique of mixed martial arts. To whatever situation happens you need to defend yourself differently. You can’t keep using the same technique over and over people will go around it and defeat you. People combine their own techniques for their fights in MMA, they don’t necessary use Lee’s technique but make up their own techniques and styles of combat to defeat their opponent. The idea of Jeet Kune Do is what influenced people to make their own styles, combining them with other ones to make a mixed martial arts the way they see fit for themselves. “a fight is infinite anything that could happen between you and other person, or in any altercation whether it’s a verbal communication or weather is a physical altercation its essentially unpredictable and infinite what could occur” (Gracie). This is the reason why people choose mixed martial arts, anything could happen at any given moment and if you did limit yourself to one style you would most likely lose because the other person can do something else. However, with Lee’s idea of mixed martial arts, you can overcome any situation that occurs.
“In reality you have to have a little piece of everything to be a complete fighter that’s what mixed martial arts is and Bruce Lee is the father of mixed martial arts” (White). Every single person that is a professional fighter always relates back to Bruce Lee. Lee changed the world with his skills and knowledge of martial arts. You need a little bit of every fighting style to have an advantage in a fight. Mixed martial art is one of the fastest growing sports around the world where people compete against each other with various styles of martial arts. All the UFC fighters have said that they were influenced by Bruce Lee; they study his martial arts and philosophy since young ages. Every fighter’s aspect of fighting has been changed when they were introduced to Bruce Lee’s style of fighting. Bruce Lee worked on circular movement so he can open up more targets on the opponent. Fighters in MMA, which adopted the same principle of redirecting motion to counter strike their opponent is influenced by Bruce Lee. “In Enter the Dragon, the first scene of the movie they have mixed martial art gloves. Those are almost exactly the same kind of gloves we fight in today” (Varner). Bruce Lee …show more content…
used gloves for fighting that are still being used today. They were used over four decades ago this is just another one of Lee’s influence on the fighting world today, Lee was far ahead of his time period! In another scene of the movie he used a move called an “arm bar” which a lot of people didn’t know what it was and again Bruce Lee was using these techniques back in the day, while we just started using them.
Sometimes there are people who idolize Bruce Lee so much that they even mimic his style of clothes! “Caceres became one of those who idolized Lee, to the point he even wears the style of clothes that Lee wore.” (Iole) Bruce Lee influence Caceres after his father showed him one of Lee’s movies, “The Chinese connection”. The reason his father showed him was to show him how to defend himself. He was bullied at the age of 6 and after seeing that movie he idolized Bruce Lee so much he wore Lee’s style of clothing and always wore the Bruce Lee gi. Now Caceres is a professional MMA fighter who competes in the bantamweight division of the UFC. People that were bullied gained the confidence that they can be stronger than their conqueror thanks to Lee’s influence through his martial arts and philosophy’s about martial arts.
People all over the world copy Bruce Lee that makes him an idol to them.
“I told people all over the world that Bruce Lee is one of my idols, mainly because of his mental stability, because of his fighting spirit, it was more mental than just physical” (Leonard). Ray Leonard was not just influenced by Lee’s fighting skills, but mainly because of his mentality and fighting spirit. This influenced him a lot that he became the best fighter of his generation; he has earned 6 championship titles and 5 weight classes! Bruce Lee influences people all differently some philosophically, some action film stars and some as a fighter with different fighting styles. “To have no style is a style that was very influenced by Bruce Lee” (Bravo) this is what all the MMA fighters live by most of the time; to have a style is to stick to one thing like wing chun, or karate. You stick to one thing a person who knows the weakness of karate will overpower you with a better style of their own, but if you mix your fighting techniques you will be stronger than then person you must have no style but not having a style is a style according to Bruce Lee. Jeet kune do, the way of the intercepting fist is more than just one type of style but multiple styles together to whatever fits you best. This is just so much influence to professional fighters in MMA, and not only just UFC fighters but famous people like Chuck Norris, Jet Li, and Jacki
Chan.
Bruce Lee also influenced many famous people around the world from philosophy to martial arts and to action based movies. “But any way, you know at that time I was teaching, I had no aspirations toward acting but I went and did the fight scene in the movie with Bruce just as a kind of a break out of my schedule” (Norris). At that time Chuck Norris went through acting school and realized he just couldn’t be an actor. But after he was starred in a fighting scene with Bruce Lee, he came back to America and decided pursuing the acting career and made a movie “Good guys wear’s black”. The critics hated his acting but thanks to the martial arts in the movie, it was a success. “The martial arts in the film was adequate and people loved it, my flying kick through the car windshield and stuff like that” (Norris) If Chuck Norris never became friends with Lee, he would never be inspired to do martial art action movies. After everyone saw Lee’s action movies, they loved Norris’s martial art action movies and he continued making more action films.
However, Bruce Lee didn’t just influence on person to make movies there are a lot of people who idolized Lee and made movies themselves. “First Bruce Lee movie I’ve seen was Enter the dragon and I became obsessed with it. I think I watched it more than any other movie I’ve ever watched my entire life, it just completely blew me away” (Ratner). Brett Ratner was greatly influenced by Bruce Lee’s films that he became a director. He directed eight featured films making one and half billion dollars. We’ve all seen the Rush hour trilogy, which Ratner directed. There are just so many martial arts action movies out there because everyone wanted to be like Bruce Lee. Our Bruce Lee’s action film stars today are people like Jet Li and Jackie Chan.
Back in Bruce Lee’s time, the Asian people were not treated so well, they were made fun of because they were so clumsy and small, most Asian people were just servants to the white people. “we connected to him he was the first to come out and say look I’m Chinese, I’m yellow skinned I could do anything everybody else can do, for myself growing up in America I can relate to him” (Yen) Bruce Lee coming to America as an immigrant making movies that people loved and being Asian which was hard in that time period stood out and was able to show that the Asian community is not so bad at all. Lee influences other Asian people that they can become something after exposing his martial art action movies to America. Donnie Yen was inspired by Lee’s acting that he became an actor himself.
There are many movies where they are influenced back to Bruce Lee’s moves like wearing yellow track suit to yelling while fighting. In the move Kill Bill, the main character wears a yellow track suit just like the one Bruce Lee wears in his movie Game of death. “every time someone gives a yell, it’s a Bruce Lee thing” (Hendrix). In every movie, you have ever seen that has people yelling before they attack someone it relates back to Bruce Lee, the directors were obviously inspired by how Bruce Lee acts in his movies and put it in their movies. Even some times in real life people yell before attacking which means they most likely saw a western movie with fighting scenes that were inspired by Bruce Lee.
Kungfu action movies don’t always have to have the stereotypical Asian people in them, they can be different. “I did this movie called Under cover brotha, and you know it’s about this brotha who wouldn’t rather use a gun but this undercover brotha solves it with his hands, he’s a Bruce Lee fanatic” (Griffen) Eddie Griffen played a character who was a crime detective who didn’t need to use a gun, but used his martial art skills to win the fights the same way Bruce Lee did in his movies, this is obviously inspired by Lee where you take down your opponents using your hands. This is only but one of the many movies which were inspired by Bruce Lee and his action film based movies. “so yeah those Bruce Lee movies had a tremendous on the choices I make” (Ratner) If you have seen any movies that have been directed by director Ratner his choice on some of his movies resemble some scenes from some of Bruce Lee’s movies. Ratner explains that in Rush hour 3 he reversed one of Bruce Lee scenes where the fight is a Chinese guy versus black guy into a black guy versus a Chinese guy, this was an inspirational effect from Lee’s films that he has made.
People watched Bruce Lees movies because they were so much different than movies they have already seen, people enjoyed them for various reasons. “he made fighting entertaining, he made it fun, he made it dramatic, he made it emotionally, he really brought martial arts to the rest of the world” (Ratner) Bruce Lee would of never became a star at his time period if he didn’t make martials arts seem the way it did. The way Lee showed martial arts was astonishing to the viewers, everyone loved it. People felt the emotion in Lee’s movies, people enjoyed it. Bruce Lee was a genius, he learned how to direct to perfection and now his movies are classics. If you don’t know how Bruce Lee is you have been living under a rock somewhere. Bruce changed the way we see action movies, he changed them entirely. Now there are plenty of movies that try to have features like in Lee’s movies “in the wake of that you have this success crouching tiger of the dragon and the matrix and Jacki Chan movies and Jet Li movies and all that you had, and you would not of had that without Bruce Lee” (Logan). Bruce Lee has only made four action films and as of now his influence is still appearing in movies today! Lee changed the action film genre so much from only making four movies, he definitely the star of the twentieth century and is still a star today his spirit lives on.
Works Cited
Norris, Chuck. Interview by Geoff Thompson. Chuck Norris Interview 1994. . Print. http://www.shotokankata.com/Articles/Chuck Norris Interview.htm.
Iole, Kevin. "Bruce Lee 's impact on mixed martial arts felt nearly 40 years after his death." 4 Nov 2012. Kevin Iole, Online Posting to Kevin Iole. E-mail. .
"Bruce Lee." IMDbPro, n. d. Web. 22 May. 2013. .
"Bruce Lee:King of Kungfu." Bruce lee. Cultural China, n. d. Web. 22 May. 2013. .
“The Bruce Lee Influence on Modern MMA. Featuring Paul Lazenby, Ralek Gracie and Eddie Bravo” YouTube. Youtube, 3 April 2012. Web. 25 April 2013 (1:47-2:00, 2:15-2:17, 2:29-2:40)
“How Bruce Lee changed the world” YouTube. Youtube, 20, October 2012. Web. 25 April 2013 (5:13-5:22, 5:32-5:37, 7:58-8:13, 17:30-17:40, 1:08:50-1:9:10, 1:10:25-1:10:30, 10:10:55-10:11:05)
Bruce Lee
One of the most famous persons in the world has changed the way society perceives the use martial arts are of course Bruce Lee. Were we no longer limit ourselves to one style but multiple styles for various situations, and today we use these fighting styles in various action films. Bruce Lee is the most influential martial artist and action film star of the twentieth century. Now days we have a sport called MMA, mixed martial arts, if it wasn’t for Bruce Lee this might have would never existed as far as we know. “Jeet Kune Do, which translates into the way of the intercepting fist, and that, is the attitude you build your own style using whatever works for you that very thought right there is the corner stone …show more content…
of modern mixed martial arts” (Lazenby). Today, people in MMA are greatly influenced by Lee’s technique of mixed martial arts. To whatever situation happens you need to defend yourself differently. You can’t keep using the same technique over and over people will go around it and defeat you. People combine their own techniques for their fights in MMA, they don’t necessary use Lee’s technique but make up their own techniques and styles of combat to defeat their opponent. The idea of Jeet Kune Do is what influenced people to make their own styles, combining them with other ones to make a mixed martial arts the way they see fit for themselves. “a fight is infinite anything that could happen between you and other person, or in any altercation whether it’s a verbal communication or weather is a physical altercation its essentially unpredictable and infinite what could occur” (Gracie). This is the reason why people choose mixed martial arts, anything could happen at any given moment and if you did limit yourself to one style you would most likely lose because the other person can do something else. However, with Lee’s idea of mixed martial arts, you can overcome any situation that occurs.
“In reality you have to have a little piece of everything to be a complete fighter that’s what mixed martial arts is and Bruce Lee is the father of mixed martial arts” (White). Every single person that is a professional fighter always relates back to Bruce Lee. Lee changed the world with his skills and knowledge of martial arts. You need a little bit of every fighting style to have an advantage in a fight. Mixed martial art is one of the fastest growing sports around the world where people compete against each other with various styles of martial arts. All the UFC fighters have said that they were influenced by Bruce Lee; they study his martial arts and philosophy since young ages. Every fighter’s aspect of fighting has been changed when they were introduced to Bruce Lee’s style of fighting. Bruce Lee worked on circular movement so he can open up more targets on the opponent. Fighters in MMA, which adopted the same principle of redirecting motion to counter strike their opponent is influenced by Bruce Lee. “In Enter the Dragon, the first scene of the movie they have mixed martial art gloves. Those are almost exactly the same kind of gloves we fight in today” (Varner). Bruce Lee …show more content…
used gloves for fighting that are still being used today. They were used over four decades ago this is just another one of Lee’s influence on the fighting world today, Lee was far ahead of his time period! In another scene of the movie he used a move called an “arm bar” which a lot of people didn’t know what it was and again Bruce Lee was using these techniques back in the day, while we just started using them.
Sometimes there are people who idolize Bruce Lee so much that they even mimic his style of clothes! “Caceres became one of those who idolized Lee, to the point he even wears the style of clothes that Lee wore.” (Iole) Bruce Lee influence Caceres after his father showed him one of Lee’s movies, “The Chinese connection”. The reason his father showed him was to show him how to defend himself. He was bullied at the age of 6 and after seeing that movie he idolized Bruce Lee so much he wore Lee’s style of clothing and always wore the Bruce Lee gi. Now Caceres is a professional MMA fighter who competes in the bantamweight division of the UFC. People that were bullied gained the confidence that they can be stronger than their conqueror thanks to Lee’s influence through his martial arts and philosophy’s about martial arts.
People all over the world copy Bruce Lee that makes him an idol to them.
“I told people all over the world that Bruce Lee is one of my idols, mainly because of his mental stability, because of his fighting spirit, it was more mental than just physical” (Leonard). Ray Leonard was not just influenced by Lee’s fighting skills, but mainly because of his mentality and fighting spirit. This influenced him a lot that he became the best fighter of his generation; he has earned 6 championship titles and 5 weight classes! Bruce Lee influences people all differently some philosophically, some action film stars and some as a fighter with different fighting styles. “To have no style is a style that was very influenced by Bruce Lee” (Bravo) this is what all the MMA fighters live by most of the time; to have a style is to stick to one thing like wing chun, or karate. You stick to one thing a person who knows the weakness of karate will overpower you with a better style of their own, but if you mix your fighting techniques you will be stronger than then person you must have no style but not having a style is a style according to Bruce Lee. Jeet kune do, the way of the intercepting fist is more than just one type of style but multiple styles together to whatever fits you best. This is just so much influence to professional fighters in MMA, and not only just UFC fighters but famous people like Chuck Norris, Jet Li, and Jacki
Chan.
Bruce Lee also influenced many famous people around the world from philosophy to martial arts and to action based movies. “But any way, you know at that time I was teaching, I had no aspirations toward acting but I went and did the fight scene in the movie with Bruce just as a kind of a break out of my schedule” (Norris). At that time Chuck Norris went through acting school and realized he just couldn’t be an actor. But after he was starred in a fighting scene with Bruce Lee, he came back to America and decided pursuing the acting career and made a movie “Good guys wear’s black”. The critics hated his acting but thanks to the martial arts in the movie, it was a success. “The martial arts in the film was adequate and people loved it, my flying kick through the car windshield and stuff like that” (Norris) If Chuck Norris never became friends with Lee, he would never be inspired to do martial art action movies. After everyone saw Lee’s action movies, they loved Norris’s martial art action movies and he continued making more action films.
However, Bruce Lee didn’t just influence on person to make movies there are a lot of people who idolized Lee and made movies themselves. “First Bruce Lee movie I’ve seen was Enter the dragon and I became obsessed with it. I think I watched it more than any other movie I’ve ever watched my entire life, it just completely blew me away” (Ratner). Brett Ratner was greatly influenced by Bruce Lee’s films that he became a director. He directed eight featured films making one and half billion dollars. We’ve all seen the Rush hour trilogy, which Ratner directed. There are just so many martial arts action movies out there because everyone wanted to be like Bruce Lee. Our Bruce Lee’s action film stars today are people like Jet Li and Jackie Chan.
Back in Bruce Lee’s time, the Asian people were not treated so well, they were made fun of because they were so clumsy and small, most Asian people were just servants to the white people. “we connected to him he was the first to come out and say look I’m Chinese, I’m yellow skinned I could do anything everybody else can do, for myself growing up in America I can relate to him” (Yen) Bruce Lee coming to America as an immigrant making movies that people loved and being Asian which was hard in that time period stood out and was able to show that the Asian community is not so bad at all. Lee influences other Asian people that they can become something after exposing his martial art action movies to America. Donnie Yen was inspired by Lee’s acting that he became an actor himself.
There are many movies where they are influenced back to Bruce Lee’s moves like wearing yellow track suit to yelling while fighting. In the move Kill Bill, the main character wears a yellow track suit just like the one Bruce Lee wears in his movie Game of death. “every time someone gives a yell, it’s a Bruce Lee thing” (Hendrix). In every movie, you have ever seen that has people yelling before they attack someone it relates back to Bruce Lee, the directors were obviously inspired by how Bruce Lee acts in his movies and put it in their movies. Even some times in real life people yell before attacking which means they most likely saw a western movie with fighting scenes that were inspired by Bruce Lee.
Kungfu action movies don’t always have to have the stereotypical Asian people in them, they can be different. “I did this movie called Under cover brotha, and you know it’s about this brotha who wouldn’t rather use a gun but this undercover brotha solves it with his hands, he’s a Bruce Lee fanatic” (Griffen) Eddie Griffen played a character who was a crime detective who didn’t need to use a gun, but used his martial art skills to win the fights the same way Bruce Lee did in his movies, this is obviously inspired by Lee where you take down your opponents using your hands. This is only but one of the many movies which were inspired by Bruce Lee and his action film based movies. “so yeah those Bruce Lee movies had a tremendous on the choices I make” (Ratner) If you have seen any movies that have been directed by director Ratner his choice on some of his movies resemble some scenes from some of Bruce Lee’s movies. Ratner explains that in Rush hour 3 he reversed one of Bruce Lee scenes where the fight is a Chinese guy versus black guy into a black guy versus a Chinese guy, this was an inspirational effect from Lee’s films that he has made.
People watched Bruce Lees movies because they were so much different than movies they have already seen, people enjoyed them for various reasons. “he made fighting entertaining, he made it fun, he made it dramatic, he made it emotionally, he really brought martial arts to the rest of the world” (Ratner) Bruce Lee would of never became a star at his time period if he didn’t make martials arts seem the way it did. The way Lee showed martial arts was astonishing to the viewers, everyone loved it. People felt the emotion in Lee’s movies, people enjoyed it. Bruce Lee was a genius, he learned how to direct to perfection and now his movies are classics. If you don’t know how Bruce Lee is you have been living under a rock somewhere. Bruce changed the way we see action movies, he changed them entirely. Now there are plenty of movies that try to have features like in Lee’s movies “in the wake of that you have this success crouching tiger of the dragon and the matrix and Jacki Chan movies and Jet Li movies and all that you had, and you would not of had that without Bruce Lee” (Logan). Bruce Lee has only made four action films and as of now his influence is still appearing in movies today! Lee changed the action film genre so much from only making four movies, he definitely the star of the twentieth century and is still a star today his spirit lives on.
Works Cited
Norris, Chuck. Interview by Geoff Thompson. Chuck Norris Interview 1994. . Print. http://www.shotokankata.com/Articles/Chuck Norris Interview.htm.
Iole, Kevin. "Bruce Lee 's impact on mixed martial arts felt nearly 40 years after his death." 4 Nov 2012. Kevin Iole, Online Posting to Kevin Iole. E-mail. .
"Bruce Lee." IMDbPro, n. d. Web. 22 May. 2013. .
"Bruce Lee:King of Kungfu." Bruce lee. Cultural China, n. d. Web. 22 May. 2013. .
“The Bruce Lee Influence on Modern MMA. Featuring Paul Lazenby, Ralek Gracie and Eddie Bravo” YouTube. Youtube, 3 April 2012. Web. 25 April 2013 (1:47-2:00, 2:15-2:17, 2:29-2:40)
“How Bruce Lee changed the world” YouTube. Youtube, 20, October 2012. Web. 25 April 2013 (5:13-5:22, 5:32-5:37, 7:58-8:13, 17:30-17:40, 1:08:50-1:9:10, 1:10:25-1:10:30, 10:10:55-10:11:05)