Influence of Movies on Culture, Research Paper Example

Bruce Lee influence on culture

With globalization and market liberalization, there is increasing movement of cultural products and services from one point of the globe to another. Such movement always is bound to bring foreign influence to the consumers. The presence of foreign songs, dances, programs and movies in domestic televisions indicate such aspects of globalization. Cultural influence always occurs when there is heavy use of such cultural products in the domestic scene. Today, many countries are imposing regulations to limit the use of such products to a certain percentage in domestic media. One area that has been found to be heavily influential culturally is the movie industry. Movies and the general audiovisual products are hard to regulate and many are the times that there are lobbies to impose restriction on the use of such products in the domestic television stations as they have been claimed to have found to impose negative externalities to the consumers of the products. The cultural effect of consumption of such audiovisual products in the domestic scene is the spread of the culture of the product’s place of origin. Foreign names, foods, clothing and other aspects of culture are adopted with increased consumption of such cultural products in the domestic scene. A good example of such case is the influence of Bruce Lee an American born Chinese movie star on American context.

Long after his death, Bruce Lee continues to influence American culture through his movies. Bruce Lee was an actor, martial artist and also an instructor of martial arts. He is remembered as the most influential martial artist of all time. However his influence was not because of his unique martial art skills but rather because of his movies which helped popularize him. His movies created a big interest in the Chinese Martial Arts movies in the western world. One of the very visible influences Bruce Lee on popular culture is emergence of new crop of martial art movies which aim at aping the styles of Bruce Lee. There is a crop of martial artist Stars who have emerged to fill the gap that has been left by Bruce Lee. Such film stars as Jackie Chan, Jet Li and Chuck Norris all ape the martial art movies of Bruce Lee. After Bruce Lee emerged in the cinemas, martial art movies and actors now moved to the main stream especially with the great copy cat artists.

Another major influence of Bruce Lee on culture is in sports where people now see Bruce Lee’s evaluation of traditional rule of martial arts as the beginning of mastering martial arts in modern context. Also there has been increasing interest in martial arts after it had been popularized by Bruce Lee and the other martial arts actors.

Bruce Lee movies

Born in America and raised in Hong Kong, Bruce Lee started his acting career at an early age with the screen name “the little dragon” when he starred in Cantonese movies. However most of his popular movies were released in the U.S. These movies helped popularize him and martial arts. The movies include “Enter the Dragon”, “Way of the Dragon” and “The Game of Death” all screened after his death. Bruce Lee also played ‘Kato’ in a popular TV series The Green Hornet in 1966. Bruce Lee starred other many martial arts movies such as The Big Boss,   released in 1971 where he plays “Chang Chao-an”, The Fists of Furry released in 1972 where he plays “Chen Zhen”. All these movies have the same theme promoting use of sport against use of crime in the society. It is perhaps because of the positive message in his movies that Bruce movies got this type of attention and following. The major theme is fight of organized crime and use of drugs in the society. These issues were a major problem and menace in the society in the 1970’s. His choice of use of sport in fighting such dangerous criminals as depicted in the movies helped popularize his movies in the American context.

As part of his influence, after his emergence in the mainstream media, Bruce Lee created a new martial arts sport known as Jun Fan Gung Fu with the first two words in the title being his other names. The sport combined elements of both western style boxing and other elements of Chinese traditional styles. This sport continues to get new enthusiasts today.

Other major influence that Bruce Lee had on culture is popularizing Asian foods especially Chinese traditional foods. This is because of the belief that such foods increased physical and mental vitality which are both necessary for success in martial arts as depicted in his movies.

In conclusion, Bruce Lee has had major influence on culture in modern day society. From many mothers naming their children after him during his days of stardom, Bruce Lee also contributed in the development of the unique martial arts sports in America. He also led to the embracing of martial arts and bringing martial art movies to the mainstream cinema. Today many boys still kick in their shadows due to the influence of such movies. On foods, there are number restaurants which specialize in selling Chinese foods. It is therefore without doubt that Bruce Lee is a classic example of foreign influence of movies and movie stars on culture.