For Part 1, The Kung Fu of Comic Cons 2019 – Silicon Valley Comic Con 2019  by Gene Ching and Patrick Lugo, click here.

"Is that Kareem’s foot on your chest?"

Johnny Yong Bosch, who played the second Black Ranger in the martial-arts-laden Saturday morning TV show, MIGHTY MORPHIN POWER RANGERS, asked me about my shirt on the first day of Silicon Valley Comic Con 2019. He was spot on. I was wearing our KungFuMagazine.com got game? T-shirt and Bosch recognized the parody of the iconic yellow racing-striped jumpsuit right away. He wasn't the only one.

Throughout SVCC, I got several compliments on our T-shirt, so many that I'm tempted to always wear it to Cons from now on. Coincidentally, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar had just made the newsfeeds again that morning with his heartfelt defense of Bruce Lee in light of Quentin Tarantino's negative portrayal in ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD, but I don't think that's what triggered all the recognition. Bosch knew. Any martial artist knows, as did many of the SVCC attendees. The yellow jumpsuit is a symbol of the martial movie fan tribe. A dad recognized it and explained it to his son who didn't. Another guy asked to take my picture so he could send to his friends. I even got into it (into 'posing' that is) with a cosplayer dressed as Kato. Comic cons are nerd meccas so some of the coolest T-shirts ever are being worn by fans and being sold at booths there. Beyond the 'officially licensed' apparel, the best Tees are the ones that speak specifically to the franchise niche, that capture the essence of the genre in an obscure or oblique way like or an inside joke that only fans share. That's high level fandom, the inner circle of the tribe. In a place where cosplayers spend thousands of dollars on their costumes, it's tough to stand out with just a T-shirt so rocking one that gets compliments is a testament to wickedly strong fashion sense. And with all the love our KungFuMagazine.com got game? was getting, I felt I had arrived.

Cons are great barometers for pop culture trends, especially the cosplay. With cosplay, fans put tremendous effort into expressing their love and devotion of a franchise. Some do it through their literality, copying every minute detail in their costume. Others do it in parody, capturing a specific cinematic moment like Kareem's footprint, or even making political commentary. I minored in Cultural Anthropology in college where the study of masking is a field on to its own. People don't don a mask randomly. A mask can a representation of inner psychology, of aspirations or perceived self-perception. There is always some intention behind the mask you choose, whether conscious or unconscious. Masking is bound by principles such as reversal, where a macho dude might dress up like Sailor Moon, or ludic recombination, where some aspect of personality is exaggerated like a sexy Catwoman, a wicked Poison Ivy or a naughty Harley Quinn. People make a conscious choice to don their specific mask and that mask tells a story.

And yet, Kung Fu is not very present in cosplay...yet. As martial arts fans, it’s easy to get martial arts myopia, to lose track of how we, as a community and as a genre, are perceived by the general public. How do non-practitioners view our martial tribe? There are derivations, expressions of Kung Fu embedded within shows like AVATAR: THE LAST AIRBENDER, MORTAL KOMBAT, or even IRON FIST, but straight up Kung Fu movie cosplay is hard to find. Where are all the Kung Fu fans and why aren't they at Comic cons representing? As it turns out, Kung Fu cosplay harder than one might think.

 

Kung Fu Cosplay

As a martial arts practitioner, I'm a strong advocate of the D.I.Y. philosophy - do it yourself. If you want to know about martial arts, you gotta do it yourself. You can’t tell someone else to do it for you. This is exacerbated by my position here as the Publisher. You don't know how many people ask me - tell me even - that I should write about their style. Srsly? As if I know anything about their style. It's their style. We rely heavily on freelance contributions so if there's something you want to see in our publications, be martial artists and do it yourself. But I digress.

A month prior to SVCC, I had the pleasure of attending the King-Daddy of all cons, San Diego Comic-Con, for the first time. As a longtime Con attendee, it blew me away. It's my new happy place. But I was disappointed in two ways. First, I saw no representation of INTO THE BADLANDS beyond me. I wore a limited-edition INTO THE BADLANDS T-shirt one day I got from Sunny himself, Daniel Wu. However, unlike our KungFuMagazine.com got game? shirt, not a soul noticed. After writing sixteen articles on the show, including a cover story, it's like that show never even existed in the realm of Comic cons, and that's a place where you'd think it would have thrived. Despite its cancellation, I have great love for that show and thought that maybe I should represent by cosplaying as Sunny or something. D.I.Y., right? But then I remembered the incredible work of Badlands Costume Designer Giovanni Lipari and realized it was out of my league.

My second SDCC disappointment was the topic of this article - there was no Kung Fu cosplay. There were cosplayers paying homage to shows that had some Kung Fu in it, like a lot of costumes from the aforementioned AVATAR: THE LAST AIRBENDER, as well as other from franchises like STREET FIGHTER and I can't even count how many Darth Mauls (I even scored a Darth Maul hat there), but nothing like the classic Shaw Brothers or Golden Harvest films that are so dear to me. I felt I could rectify that. Once again, D.I.Y. It's the martial way.

In Cultural Anthropology, field research is divided into two categories: etic and emic. Etic research means that the researcher observes a culture from the outside looking in. Emic means the researcher takes the insider's perspective and immerses into the culture. These are based on the same suffixes used in language, as in phonetic and phonemic. I went emic. If no one else was repping Kung Fu at Cons, I'm happy to go in and hang out with the likes of sexy Catwoman, wicked Poison Ivy and naughty Harley Quinn, all in the name of research.

 

The Pai Mei Cosplay Experiment

I've often fantasized about getting four other guys together and doing FIVE DEADLY VENOMS (1978). I actually made a Scorpion mask for the 2016 Tiger Claw Halloween Party. It was an excuse to watch the movie again (as if I even need an excuse) but I made it out of oven-hardening clay, which was way too heavy and brittle to be functional. Now it hangs in my office to the delight of any visitor who recognizes it. The challenge of doing the Venoms crew is that I'd need a more practical mask and four other accomplices.

As it turns out, Kung Fu cosplay isn't that simple. Beyond Bruce Lee caricatures like the aforementioned Kato and yellow jumpsuit, the costumes in most Kung Fu movies are just Kung Fu uniforms. It's tough to distinguish a specific character unless they don something outstanding, like venom masks. I wear Kung Fu uniforms all the time. There's a trend towards super sparkly sequined uniforms at tournaments nowadays, but those wouldn't really be cosplay. At best, wearing one of those might elicit a 'Who are you supposed to be?' if anything at all. That's no way to represent.

I chose Pai Mei, or Bak Mei as he's more popularly known in within our Kung Fu tribe (it's the same name, just different spellings). Pai Mei is more popular in America due to Gordon Liu's portrayal in KILL BILL VOL. 2 (2004). I was really going for more of a Shaw Brothers Bak Mei akin to the villainous portrayals by the mighty Lo Lieh, but any recognition counts. It was about 50/50 - those that recognized me as Pai Mei versus those the referenced Shaw Brothers or other Kung Fu movies. I'm fine with that. Sometimes I’d stop to chat up my fellow fan, and cursorily explain that Tarantino’s Pai Mei was poached from so many Kung Fu movies as well as actual history. Other times, I’d just toss my beard and say something like “Your so-called Kung Fu... is really... quite pathetic.”

There was actually an implicit Kung Fu lesson in my prop beard. In real life, I have a small goatee that hides a keloid scar, nothing like the foot of white hair spirit gummed to my chin for Pai Mei. Dealing with that was challenging. There's actually traditional Kung Fu moves, particularly with Guan Dao, where gestures are made that emulate tossing a long beard over over your shoulder, just like in the movies. Lord Guan Yu was a legendary general and has been deified as the patron saint of martial arts. He had a long beard and some Guan Dao forms include a beard toss in homage, and also as a kind of block. The beard toss is echoed in the movies, especially by Pai Mei, but I couldn't quite pull it off because I failed to attach the beard firmly enough to withstand such tossing. That actually disappointed one fan who recognized Pai Mei. Lesson learned.

The beard lesson reminded me about the oblique usefulness of cosplay to practice. Back when I used to sell swords for The Armoury, one of the perks was I'd get comp tickets to the Renaissance Faire every year. Being Asian, I never felt quite right about dressing up in Renn attire, but I never miss a chance to carry a sword around. One of the oversights of modern Kung Fu is that we don't carry our scabbards on our hips anymore. Bearing a sword is trickier than you'd think, especially in a crowd. You have to be mindful of it whenever you move, when you sit down and especially when you go to the bathroom. It makes you rethink the unwieldy weapons, like the Guan Dao or even Tiger Hooks. They are so awkward to carry that it makes you wonder if they really were street practical. Now I'm not recommending that Kung Fu practitioners open carry swords everywhere, but in a socially-condoned environment like a Renn Faire or a Comic Con, wearing a sword all day is an interesting exercise in swordsmanship.

That Renn Faire experience also made me consider diversity. At SVCC, I talked to a few Asian fans who like me, felt limited in their cosplay options. There's anime of course, which is a massive genre on to its own, but not many Asian superheroes in American pop culture. At this point, there's one Asian superhero in the MCU, Benedict Wong's Wong from DOCTOR STRANGE. However, just like with classic Kung Fu movies, Wong's outfit isn't particularly distinctive. Unless you bear a physical resemblance to Wong, that's a tough cosplay to be recognized. With Disney's Live-Action MULAN and SHANG-CHI AND THE LEGEND OF THE TEN RINGS on the way, maybe this will change.

On Sunday, actor Anson Mount spoke very eloquently about tribe and storytelling at his Q&A, ‘A Conversation with Star Trek Discovery's Captain Pike’. While speaking to joining a franchise as massive as STAR TREK, he digressed into the universal nature of storytelling as a tool for tribes to transmit culture. He postulated that storytelling was what distinguished the human tribe, and those tribal bonds are what allowed humans to survive where other humanoids, like the Cro-magnons, did not. He felt that impending worries about the death of the movie theater were unfounded because humans will always want to gather around the fire and share such tribal stories together. It’s fundamental human nature. From this perspective, Comic cons are expansive fireside gatherings, a coming together of so many tribes. As Kung Fu aficionados, we need to be sure that our stories continue to be represented there, just like everywhere. Otherwise, like the Cro-magnon, we face extinction.