Kung Fu
| |
| Ahhh Glasshoppa, you are not yet ready for the final great mystery ... now go make my tea. |
|---|
Kung Fu is an ancient Chinese martial art. It has it basis in techniques that have been around for 6000 years.
The problem is that for most people Kung Fu only entered western awareness when Bruce Lee stared in a 1973 film called Enter the Dragon - thats a kung fu movie NOT a fantasy bestiality movie. As a result most people dont know what real Kung Fu is cause this wasn't real Kung Fu, just an blackxploitation movie with only one black dude and a bunch of chinks.
Hong Kong cinema began to produce hundreds of really bad kung fu movies which were lapped up by an audience with more money than sense. In mitigation it did give us Jackie Chan, an extremely entertaining acrobat and martial arts practitioner ... but it still wasn't real Kung Fu.
Millions of people now thought fighting required you to leap about the place with your shirt off, your lips out of sync with your words ... making strange squeaking noises. The result of this was some gullible people got a terrible shoeing in street fights. This also was not Kung Fu.
This led to the inevitable cash in single in the charts by a black dude called Carl Douglas. This was seriously NOT Kung Fu but strangely dance-able - Just make some pretend kung fu moves to the music next time you're down the Sticky Carpet.
A tv program starring David Carradine (Kung Fu) was yet another cash in on the craze. It told a tale of a Shaolin monk wandering about in the USA in the late 19th century. This was less Kung Fu and more A Fist Full of Dollars with some fairly lame, slow motion martial arts squeezed in. Why no-one thought to shoot Carradine's character is beyond me. So not Kung Fu.
From here it all went downhill for Kung Fu when the Goodies took the piss with 't Lancastrian martial art of Eckie Thump.
Today even real Kung Fu today isn't real kung fu. The Shaolin monks, guardians of the martial art for hundreds of years are now more 'dance troop' exported around the world by the Chinese government for foreign currency and good PR.
