dc.description.abstract | This thesis aims to deal with Bruce Lee’s kung fu movies with regard to the fantasy/phantasy expressed in it. In this thesis, the conventionally emphasized movie scenarios will be less discussed, instead, attention will be paid to the essential element of this type of movie, that is, Bruce Lee’s kung fu, Jeet Kune Do. I would examine how Bruce Lee’s kung fu movies, his performing art (JKD), and his cinematic image are connected to the psychoanalytic concept of fantasy/phantasy.
In the first chapter, I would start by drawing on the theoretic concept of fantasy/phantasy elaborated by two antithetic schools, one represented by Jean Laplanche and J.B. Pontalis, and the other by Susan Isaacs and Hanna Segal. I will demonstrate what each sect’s theoretical contention has to contribute to our understanding of kung fu as a type of fantasy/phantasy. My argument in this part is that kung fu, the performing art acted out by Bruce Lee, stands for another embedded fantasy/phantasy within the cinematic fantasy/phantasy.
In the second chapter, I will go on to introduce Bruce Lee’s personal philosophical annotation on his artistic creation, JKD. His annotation or we could call it doctrine provides enlightening perspective for us to better understand the content of fantasy/phantasy revealed through these bodily movements. It turns out that its hidden content is closely related to the formation of the ego, the ego of the artist (Bruce Lee) and the ego of the spectators. Therefore the theory of the vision developed in Kaja Silverman’s The Threshold of the Visible World would be very helpful for our purpose of clarifying how proprioception and the mechanism of gaze are interwoven. My argument here is that in creating and performing JKD movements, that is, when immersed in his JKD fantasy/phantasy, Bruce Lee (as he claimed) has attained/ felt a triumphal proprioceptive ego which is free from culture markings. However, I would also say that this triumphal proprioceptive ego remains constrained under the spectator’s gaze which is the ultimately factor that determines the contour of his image. The gaze pins him up as another ideal image which is not free from cultural markings but distorts stereotypical cultural markings. Both JKD the performing art and spectatorial gaze indicate two different fantastic/phantastic wishes.
In the third chapter, I would continue with the issue of ego formation and try to connect the relationship among idealization, identification and fantasy/phantasy that is experienced by Lee’s audience. Again, Kaja Silverman’s The Threshold of the Visible World will be the main theoretical source I resort to. My argument on this part is that Lee’s audience identify both heteropathicly and idiopathicly: heteropath because succumbed to the bodily ideality of Lee, idiopathic because the accessibility to learning JKD. Therefore I would say that JKD is more than an expression of fantasy/phantasy but also an effort to attain that fantasy/phantasy. It is, as Hanna Segal has expounded, an artistic work that connects to the objective reality. However, such an effort remains futile for it still restrains the one who identifies through it (idiopathic identification) distant from the world of symbolic. At the end of this chapter, therefore, I would present Stephen Chow’s comedies whose funny language (jokes) replaces JKD for audience to cling to and thereby get closer to the world of objects. | en_US |