Legend of The Chinese Boxer: Jimmy Wang Yu’s cosmopolitan wuxia pian

Abstract

The response to Jimmy Wang Yu’s death in April 2022 revealed the symptoms of undercelebration: while every professional obituary recognized the late filmmaker’s importance, few could explain why without inaccuracy or misattribution. This resonates with a long tradition of subjugating Wang’s work within the context of other, much more integral figures, in which the cultural and economic motivators for his filmic aesthetics are insufficiently considered. Similarly, various elements of Wang’s work, especially his purported anti-Japanism, have long been subjected to conjecture and simplification, or else an overreliance on the incorporation of biographical details into textual analyses of his films. This article aims to disentangle and clarify the myths and misconceptions that complicate the story of Wang’s career. To avoid repeating prior mistakes – i.e., to prevent the narrative distortion of associated figures within Wang’s narrative – the article will use the political economy of cinema as a guiding framework. The overall aim is to present a decentralized view of The Chinese Boxer (1970) to evaluate the cultural and material factors that motivated Wang’s career peak and the film for which he is most remembered.