The Karate Kid Turns 40: How The Cult Teen Classic Celebrated — And Stereotyped — The East |
At the heart of the 1984 film's appeal was a stereotyping of the East as exotic and mysterious, writes Paul Bowman |
FORTY YEARS after the release of The Karate Kid, fans of the film still can’t hear the name “Daniel” without wanting to add a “san” to it. They may channel the iconic teacher Mr Miyagi, with his deep guttural intensity. And they may even repeat the film’s most famous saying, “wax on, wax off”, raise their arms and stand on one leg whenever they hear that someone does karate. But are these fragments the sum total of the film’s legacy? In most respects, The Karate Kid is entirely conventional: Daniel LaRusso (Ralph Macchio) is the new kid in town. He attempts to socialise, falls for a girl (Elisabeth Shue) and provokes the wrath of her recent ex-boyfriend, Johnny (William Zabka), who also happens to be the senior student at a tough karate dojo, Cobra Kai. The beatings and harassment Daniel experiences induce a hermit-like caretaker, Mr Miyagi (Pat Morita), to offer him guidance and, crucially, karate lessons. The film’s director, John G Avildsen, had previously helmed Rocky, in which an over-the-hill, working-class underdog (Sylvester Stallone) rises to a challenge from the world's leading boxer, takes a heroic beating in the ring, and gets the girl. The Karate Kid retooled this formula to expand its appeal into the teen market, replacing the brutal boxing of older men with teen heart-throbs and the extremely cinematic practice of karate. |
Coming a decade after the kung fu craze of the 1970s, The Karate Kid translated Hong Kong kung fu into Hollywood karate. It registered the popularity and power of a macho, militarised karate – Cobra Kai’s bad-guy sensei, John Kreese (Martin Kove), was a Green Beret soldier. Against this, the film advocated the “exotic” concept of a pacifist and cultured karate, one based on balance and harmony. Yet, the idea that “true karate” is pacifist and philosophical owes considerably more to hippy counterculture and the 1970s TV series Kung Fu than it does to anything actually eastern. Stream the latest movies and shows with OTTplay Premium's Jhakaas monthly pack, for only Rs 249.
Indeed, The Karate Kid was arguably a vital part of the “spiritualising” and “existentialising” of Asian martial arts that took place in western popular culture in the early 1980s. The 1983 BBC TV series (and accompanying book) The Way of the Warrior: The Paradox of the Martial Arts is another example – in which the 1970s love of spectacular Asian martial arts is still present, but now people are also asking: “Is that all there is?”
The answer given by The Karate Kid was a resounding “no” – Asian martial arts were not just about macho pugilism. They were paths to development, self-improvement and “peace”. This was expressed through Orientalist imagery and straightforward binaries, opposing the heartless, macho, militarised modern “west” with a sensitive, nurturing, philosophical and ancient “east”. |
Orientalist binaries were (and are) everywhere in western culture, from “white saviour” action films like The Last Samurai (2003) to ostensibly woke, multicultural films such as Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings (2021). In all of these examples, the west is spiritually empty, the east a treasure trove of ancient values. The problem is that this is the very hallmark of Orientalism – the simplistic, reductive stereotyping of the “mysterious east”. Orientalism is not quite racism, but it’s not a world away either.
Certainly, Pat Morita had to fulfil a certain stereotype. We know this because he auditioned twice for the Mr Miyagi role. The first time, he spoke in his own voice with an American accent. He bombed. So he returned with a thick Japanese accent and sentence constructions worthy of Charlie Chan, the fictional 1930s film detective long criticised for perpetuating stereotypes of Asian characters. This time, Morita aced it – because he now conformed to what scholar Jane Iwamura has called the “oriental monk” stereotype. The 2010 remake of The Karate Kid arguably tried to avoid all this, mainly by deconstructing and demystifying Mr Miyagi, transforming him into the broken Mr Han. Playing Han, Jackie Chan was finally allowed to act for a western audience – to have depth, complexity and feelings. Yet it seems the film-makers lost faith in this approach, soon making Han take his protégé, Dre (Jaden Smith), to China’s Wudang mountains for a heroic dose of Orientalist mysticism. |
Perhaps western (and indeed, global) audiences cannot get enough of Orientalism. Netflix’s nostalgic Cobra Kai series picked up Daniel and Johnny’s story decades later, but offered a much more tongue-in-cheek take.
In early episodes, we see Daniel, now a father living in a wealthy part of Los Angeles, accused of “cultural appropriation”. He asks his daughter’s Asian-American friend where his parents are “originally” from, to which the reply “Irvine, I guess” turns the interrogation back onto the question of his own values and prejudices.
Ultimately, Cobra Kai reckons with Orientalism by ridiculing it. And there is value in this. But what such easy laughs do not help us work out is what else was (and is) going on. We might want to laugh at the Orientalist themes of the past, but we should also remember: we loved them, and we probably still do. Paul Bowman is professor of Cultural Studies at Cardiff University. This essay originally appeared on The Conversation and has been republished under the Creative Commons Licence. |
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