Martial Arts and Media Culture in the Information Era: Glocalization, Heterotopia, Hyperculture

This chapter is derived from the Editor’s Introduction to the edited collection Chinese Martial Arts and Media Culture: Global Perspectives [Rowman & Littlefield International, 2018]. The collection explores how narratives and aesthetics of the martial arts genre(s) are shaped and imbued with meaning in changing social, cultural, and media arrangements. Drawing from a range of recent media texts, this introductory chapter discusses the global circulation of signs and images of (Chinese) martial arts and their engagement with alleged national, cultural, textual, generic, and media borders. It argues that these texts reflect and (re)produce three paradigms of martial arts and media culture in the information age: glocalization, heterotopia, and hyperculture. What connects these three notions is that, rather than erase difference or establish it as something substantial and dividing, they engage with difference and otherness in inclusive and transformative ways.