So, I look at this moment of the global Kung fu craze
and forward this idea of the yellow mask.
This concept takes advantage of the writings
of two scholars.
The first is Frantz Fanon in Black Skin, White Masks.
Fanon called for the man of color to relinquish the quest
for a white mask and instead proudly accept
the symbolic link between one's colored mask
with one's same-colored skin.
This epidermal reaffirmation of identity
expressed itself through an act of violence,
so if we present Bruce Lee and the wearing of a yellow mask,
it makes sense, because we are viewing Kung fu
as a means toward self-liberation and self-actualization
by enacting Fanon's call for violence.
So Bruce Lee provided the epidermal reaffirmation
of identity whereby a yellow face proudly displayed
its yellow mask to signify yellow power.
This, in turn, made the wearing of a yellow mask
by people without yellow skin popular and desirable.
In the West, yellow is associated with sickness
and cowardice, but in China, yellow is associated
with the emperor and Chan Buddhism,
the religious source of Chinese Kung fu.
Lee also added the fashion accessory
of his trademark yellow jumpsuit
with a dominant black stripe,
and so when we see Bruce Lee in his iconic pose,
he is, in fact, welcoming us to wear a yellow mask.
I also refer to the scholarship of Richard Dyer
in an article entitled White.
Dyer theorizes Marilyn Monroe's cinematic aura
as a signifier for everything-and-nothingness
that simultaneously embodies the body that is constructed
to be inescapably and necessarily a white one.
Dyer further asserts as the body,
Monroe epitomized the white woman as a social construct
that stands for the apotheosis of desirability;
all that a man could want, yet nothing that can be had,
nor anything that a woman can be.
Now we can switch from Marilyn Monroe's white
to Bruce Lee's yellow, but with this we also have to add
Bruce Lee's Kung fu body that is by definition a yellow one.
The difference here between Monroe's white body
and Bruce Lee's yellow body is that Lee actualized his body
by way of Jeet Kune Do, so it is in fact an achievable body.
