Museumising Bruce Lee in a Hong Kong public museum: (De)political imagination and the culture of disappearance

ABSTRACT

Scholars have recognised the significance of museums for establishing and maintaining national legitimacy and shaping identity. Following the transfer of sovereignty over Hong Kong from the United Kingdom to the People’s Republic of China in 1997, tensions emerged between Chinese national identity and local Hong Kong identity. Drawing inspiration from studies of the role of museums in nation-building, research on Hong Kong museums, and Ackbar Abbas’ notion of cultures of disappearance, we conducted a comparative analysis of two Bruce Lee exhibitions at the Hong Kong Heritage Museum, the first of which was held between 2013 and 2020 and the second of which opened in November 2021. A comparison of these exhibitions demonstrates their distinct approaches to appropriating Lee’s legacy by drawing attention to changes in the associated narratives that reflect changes in the cultural and political climate. While both exhibitions engaged with the concept of disappearance, the earlier one did so by adhering to the conventional ‘East-meets-West’ framework, resulting in the effacement of Hong Kong culture. In contrast, the deployment of techniques of disappearance in the later exhibition challenged viewers’ perception of reality, prompting contemplation of the self and identity by embracing strategies of disappearance while resisting a culture of disappearance. However, this came at the cost of downplaying Lee’s significance as a symbol of resistance.

KEYWORDS:

• Bruce Lee
• Hong Kong
• museum
• identity
• culture of disappearance

Introduction

Museums play a key role in articulating national identities. Thus, their proliferation in nineteenth-century Europe was closely linked to the development and establishment of nation-states. In Asia, the creation of museums coincided with the era of colonialism, as European colonisers utilised museums to rationalise and validate their presence and activities in the colonies (Anderson 1991; Macdonald 2003). Postcolonial nation-states continue to use museums to cultivate a distinct national identity. However, as globalisation accelerated in the late twentieth century, efforts were made to articulate post-national and cosmopolitan identities in museums worldwide (Macdonald 2003; Mason 2013). The representation of identity in museums is particularly challenging in postcolonial Hong Kong, where Chinese nationalism, British colonialism, and the Hongkonger identity converge even as post-national approaches to museology emphasise cosmopolitan identities.

The British colonised Hong Kong in 1841 and transferred sovereignty to China in 1997 in what is commonly referred to as the Handover, which turned the city into a Special Administrative Region of China. This shift in governance marked the beginning of a tug-of-war between Chinese nationalism and local identity. On the one hand, the portrayal of China in local media became increasingly positive, and Chinese national identity became part of local school curricula (Edward and Flora 2005; Mathews, Lui, and Ma 2007). On the other hand, campaigns such as the 2012 Civil Alliance Against National Education, the 2014 Umbrella Movement opposing the Chinese central government’s pre-screening of chief executive candidates, and the 2019 Anti-extradition Bill Movement reflected many Hongkongers’ yearning for a distinct local identity amidst China’s growing influence (Ip 2020). Since the implementation of the Hong Kong National Security Law in 2020, there has been a push in local education and public discourse to emphasise Chinese culture as the cornerstone of local identity. A study of the official curriculum and textbooks for ‘Citizenship and Social Development’, a subject introduced in 2022 to replace ‘Liberal Studies’, revealed that the reflective discourse surrounding Hongkonger identity present in the Liberal Studies materials had vanished, with the new textbooks presenting ‘identity as monolithically Chinese and rooted in a unilinear narrative of the local past’ (Vickers 2024, 12). Apparently, the notion of a unique Hongkonger identity is inconsistent with the current official discourse.

This study examines two consecutive Bruce Lee exhibitions held at the Hong Kong Heritage Museum (HKHM) as case studies of the ‘museumisation’ of political imagination (Anderson 1991). Lee’s life and career, which intersects with Chinese martial arts, the British colonial influence, Hongkonger identity, and US cultural power, mirrors the evolving construction of identity in Hong Kong’s museums. Furthermore, Lee has been widely recognised as a symbol of resistance associated with Chinese nationalist liberation (Teo 1997), postcolonial consciousness (Kato 2007), and/or a cosmopolitan notion of the pursuit of justice (Brown 1997). Consequently, the various and evolving representations of Lee in Hong Kong’s public museums, amidst the conflicting nationalist, postcolonial, postnationalist, and neonationalist discourses circulating in Hong Kong society, shed significant light on the changing official discourse on identity – particularly in light of Lee’s enduring status as an icon of resistance in the context of the city’s current cultural and political challenges (NHK World 2019).

Both exhibitions were organised collaboratively by the Bruce Lee Foundation and the HKHM, with the foundation providing most of the exhibits for the shows (Visit HK Museums 2013). The first exhibition, Bruce Lee: Kung Fu ·Art · Life, featuring more than 600 items, ran from 20 July 2013 to 31 December 2020 and drew approximately 3.7 million visitors. The curatorial team for the HKHM organised this collaborative effort to ‘retell the life of Bruce Lee through his own words and belongings’, although the museum’s collection did not include any of Lee’s personal items (Visit HK Museums 2013). In November 2021, a second, revamped exhibition, A Man Beyond the Ordinary: Bruce Lee, opened with some 400 items on display. In addition to the new exhibits, highlights included large-scale multimedia displays and several interactive installations, as a government official noted at the inauguration (HKHM 2022).

Our comparison of the narration of Bruce Lee in these shows, inspired by museum studies and the notion of a ‘culture of disappearance’ developed by Abbas (1997), reveals the efforts made by the HKHM to meet the challenges of reconciling the complex layers of history, identity, globalisation, and geo-politics associated with Lee. In particular, the earlier exhibition used a ‘harmonious duality’ framework that contributed to the effacement of Hong Kong culture by concealing the complexities of Hong Kong’s cultural heritage. In contrast, the revamped exhibition employed techniques of disappearance in its narrative and interactive video installations to challenge traditional notions of identity and culture and thereby highlighted the concept of ‘self as illusion’ and portrayed Lee as something more than an ethnic cultural icon. Nevertheless, the second exhibition followed the global ‘Bruce Lee industry’ and its commodified representations in depoliticising Lee and, ultimately, downplaying his original significance as a symbol of resistance.

Museums and national/post-national identities

From the perspective of modern museum scholarship, it is inaccurate to describe museums as neutral spaces for collecting and displaying historical artefacts to represent the past ‘as it really was’ (Bennett 1995, 147). Rather, museums are institutions that accumulate and reconfigure historical narratives; accordingly, they have the potential to influence values and practices broadly (Luke 2002). According to Knell, the narratives that museums adopt are shaped through aesthetic and poetic forms of connection and disconnection, constructing distinct versions of reality through material means; these methods forge links to people, histories, and ideals while also promoting ‘cultural and historical amnesia’ (2011, 14) regarding complex, challenging, and ideologically loaded accounts and the ethnically diverse present.

Furthermore, the physicality of museums and their collections, through a process that Handler describes as ‘cultural objectification’, plays a crucial role in this process of constructing a preferred reality and glossing over less desirable aspects. This objectification transforms culture and identity into ‘a thing: a natural object or entity made up of objects and entities’ (Handler 1988, 14), giving them a fact-like quality. Anderson’s term ‘museumising imagination’ (1991, 252) describes how ‘colonial regimes began attaching themselves to antiquity as much as conquest … . Monumental archaeology … allowed the state to appear as the guardian of a generalised, but also local, tradition’ (253). Consequently, museums are ‘readily appropriated as “national” expressions of identity’ (Macdonald 2003, 3), because the ‘shape of the past’ is pivotal for a nation (Bennett 1995, 146).

In recent decades, accelerating globalisation has resulted in scrutiny of the national identities of museums (Rogan 2004). Macdonald (2003) suggests that museums can articulate post-national and transcultural identities that move beyond national or ethnic narratives. Conversely, Mason (2013) observes that globalisation, nationalism, and localism are intertwined and co-constitutive, advocating a nationally situated cosmopolitan museology. Research by Levitt (2015) on the contribution of museums to nation-building and the presentation of nations on the global stage indicates that aspiring global players such as Singapore and Qatar use museums to showcase selected aspects of cosmopolitanism while downplaying potential challenges to state authority and issues that might inspire demands for the expansion of rights and freedoms.

Studies of Hong Kong museums and nation-building

Studies of Hong Kong museums and nation-building often centre on The Hong Kong Story, a permanent exhibition housed in the Hong Kong Museum of History (hereafter ‘History Museum’) since 2001 (hence, after the Handover). Assessments of this exhibition vary (cf. Law 2014; Stokes-Rees 2019; Vickers 2007). However, scholars agree that its orientation and approach mirror the promotion of traditional Chinese nationalism through glorification of the nation’s past in China’s national museums, but that it fails to engage meaningfully with the colonial legacy. For example, an analysis by Stokes-Rees (2019) of the narrative, layout, and display of The Hong Kong Story draws attention to the use of a processional storytelling technique in guiding visitors from the natural history section to the depiction of a modern metropolis to dramatise Hong Kong’s ‘miraculous transformation’. The downplaying of the colonial legacy and the reality of the modern state and the emphasis on images of ‘indigenous’ folklife create ‘an orientalised image of Hong Kong’ rooted in Chinese tradition (192).

Law (2014) highlights the contrasting approaches taken by the History Museum and the Macao¹ Museum. In particular, the History Museum aligns its exhibitions with traditional Chinese nationalism by downplaying British rule and emphasising what Lim (2010) calls ‘victimhood nationalism’ to foster national solidarity, whereas the Macao Museum emphasises cultural diversity and peaceful coexistence between Chinese and, in this case, Portuguese cultures. These disparities are attributable to the differing diplomatic relationships that the two regions have with China and illustrate the government’s concern with establishing a collective national identity and projecting the state’s image. Law (2014) argues that while Beijing’s influence on Hong Kong’s identity was limited prior to the Handover, it has since enforced the History Museum’s adherence to the standard nationalist narrative as part of its effort to promote patriotism. According to Law, these divergent approaches demonstrate ‘the exceptional flexibility of China’s post-communist regime in engaging in soft power diplomacy rather than constituting a dilemma’ (550).

Thus, Hong Kong’s public museums have become increasingly aligned with the Chinese nationalist narrative since the Handover. For example, Gruber’s (2014) analysis of an exhibition entitled The Majesty of All Under Heaven: The Eternal Realm of China’s First Emperor (2012) at the History Museum, which highlighted the glory of China’s unification and sought to instil pride in Chinese national subjects, shows how the immersive and interactive displays encouraged visitors to engage emotionally and feel proud of the unification of China.

The construction and disappearance of the HKHM

The HKHM is one of the 15 public museums managed by the Hong Kong government. It opened to the public in 2010 in Shatin, New Territories, some distance from the city centre. According to the museum’s website, its mission is ‘to promote and preserve Hong Kong’s diverse cultures, with a focus on living heritage and creative culture’ (HKHM 2014). However, the museum’s role relative to that of other Hong Kong museums is unclear, because one of its permanent exhibitions, on Cantonese opera heritage, overlaps with an exhibition in the History Museum and two of its galleries showcasing Chinese art are similar to displays in the Hong Kong Museum of Art (HKMoA). The ambiguity of the HKHM’s mission may result from the tug-of-war between Chinese nationalism and local identity, influenced by the shifting political atmosphere. In the 2000s, the local authorities seemed to allow the establishment of a museum to promote Hong Kong identity under an ‘East-meets-West’ framework, with the East as the foundation. Consequently, Cantonese opera and Chinese art are featured prominently in permanent exhibitions to provide a state-legitimised expression of local identity, despite the overlap with other museums. However, changes in the city’s political atmosphere in recent years may have prompted adjustments to the nation-building efforts of Hong Kong museums. On 6 December 2023, the newly established Culture, Sports, and Tourism Bureau proposed to the Hong Kong Legislative Council the opening of a new museum showcasing China’s achievements through history. The proposal involved the repurposing of the current Hong Kong Science Museum site in the Tsim Sha Tsui district in the city centre and the relocation of that museum to the current site of the HKHM in Shatin, raising the possibility that the HKHM would be closed and its collection dispersed among other museums. The proposal immediately sparked concern in Hong Kong, with many arguing that the government should have built the Chinese achievement museum at a new location. Cultural critics saw the closure of HKHM as part of the government’s agenda to glorify China and erase local culture, mirroring recent political and cultural developments (Mak 2023). This has led overseas Hongkongers’ organisations to launch a joint campaign condemning the proposed closure of HKHM (Photomedia 2023). Huang Yaoqiang, president of the Bruce Lee Club, lamented the closure, noting its significance as a pilgrimage site for Lee’s fans. Authorities responded that the rearrangement would shorten the construction time for the China’s achievement museum (Mak 2023). The proposal suggests the government’s priority to emphasise Chinese nationalism in museum narratives while downplaying Hong Kong’s local heritage.

This abrupt shift also reflects the organisational structure of the museum system. The government maintains centralised control over Hong Kong’s public museums and their resources, with curators serving as public officers. The government appoints the members of the Museum Advisory Committee, which oversees the museums’ operations and programming (HKSARG 2022). Consultants may assist with research, writing reports, and planning exhibitions, but the final decisions rest with curators operating within the governmental framework. Indeed, the decision to host the first Bruce Lee exhibition at the HKHM, as recorded in the minutes of the Legislative Council Hong Kong (2012), was based on the museum’s capacity to accommodate large crowds. This decision was consistent with the Tourism Commission’s intention to attract visitors from mainland China and overseas. This structure enables the government to enforce its interests, with space allowed for curators’ professional input only when it does not conflict with the government’s agenda. As discussed below, curators at the HKHM have subtly adopted post-national museology in the revamped Bruce Lee exhibition.

Ackbar Abbas on Hong Kong’s postcolonial culture of disappearance

Abbas (1997) explores the cultural landscape of Hong Kong in the context of urban development, political changes, and cultural hybridity. In discussing the influence of the city’s history, including colonialism and the Handover, on its cultural production, he introduces the concept of ‘disappearance’, which encompasses the loss of physical spaces, cultural practices, along with self-invention by Hong Kong’s cultural practitioners. He argues that colonialism both integrated Hong Kong into the global economy and led to cultural and political differences between Hong Kong and mainland China. Abbas also critiques the impact of consumerism associated with the city’s one-dimensional colonial economic development and restrictions on political development. Yet this resultant market-oriented and depoliticised mentality faced challenges before the anxieties over the Handover. The Sino-British Joint Declaration in 1984 and the Tiananmen Massacre in 1989 raised concerns about the potential erasure of Hong Kong’s cultural legacy, which sparked an interest in preserving local culture.

Abbas (1997) explores this apprehension as the emergence of a unique ‘culture of disappearance’. First, his conception of disappearance involves not absence but misrecognition. For example, despite significant developments in its cinema, architecture, and literature, Hong Kong was often described as a ‘cultural desert’ before the 1970s owing to an import mentality and a view of its culture as originating externally, from China or the West. For Abbas, this refusal to acknowledge existing cultural expression is a kind of ‘reverse hallucination’ (6).

Second, many representations actively contribute to the disappearance of culture, particularly through the use of outdated binaries such as East/West. This discourse is evident in cinema, architecture, and literature, where disappearance involves substitution and replacement rather than erasure of the city’s cultural identity. Representations that are familiar and plausible contain perceived threats, perpetuating the illusion of cultural preservation while concealing the true complexities of Hong Kong’s cultural heritage and, thereby, contributing to the gradual disappearance of its distinctive cultural legacy.

Innovative work, which represents the bulk of the city’s provocative and exciting cultural productions, is a third dimension of the culture of disappearance described by Abbas. This involves the development of techniques that respond to the space of disappearance without being absorbed by it. Examples include the leveraging of disappearance to challenge traditional representations, problematise visuality, and negotiate the intricate dynamics of colonialism, nationalism, and capitalism. For instance, Stanley Kwan employs the figure of a ghost in his film Rouge (1988) to counter the effects of reverse hallucination. Similarly, Wong Kar-wai invents a form of visuality in his films (e.g. Chungking Express 1994) that problematises conventional visual representations and prevents images from dissolving into clichés.

Abbas argues for engagement with the dynamics of disappearance rather than resistance or denial. He also cautions against viewing the local, the marginal, and the cosmopolitan as forms of postcolonial subjectivity, as attempts to present the self as a subject within these fixed representations often lead to the disappearance of postcolonial subjectivity. Transcending the adoption of a local dialect or claims to local status, the notion of the local questions the already translated nature of local architecture, in that the notion of the local shows the influence of colonial power. The use of conventional imagery to depict the local in literature can breed distrust and reservations. Marginality, as a form of self-invention, can inadvertently reinforce rather than challenge the centre. Similarly, an optimistic universal cosmopolitanism may overlook unequal historical conditions of cultural production. While cosmopolitanism may promote cultural equality, it comes with the risk of neglecting power dynamics and historical contexts. Abbas suggests, accordingly, that a postcolonial subject should embrace strategies of disappearance to navigate and resist the culture of disappearance rather than seeking another stable identity.

Abbas’ conceptualisation of the culture of disappearance and techniques of disappearance offers a valuable framework for analysing the HKHM’s two Bruce Lee exhibitions. The biography of Lee narrated in the earlier exhibition perpetuates the cliché of Hong Kong culture as a product of the intersection between East and West in ways that contribute to a ‘reverse hallucination’ (Abbas 1997) as well as ‘historical amnesia’ (Knell 2011). We build on Abbas’ discussion of the techniques of disappearance and explore their use in our account of the immersive installation in the revamped exhibition, drawing attention to the deployment of such techniques as setup, reflections, and visual treatments. We also emphasise Abbas’ notion of the ‘self as illusion’ in critiquing the portrayal of Lee as merely an ethnic cultural icon. While Abbas’ analysis falls short in terms of addressing the complexities of global capitalism, studies of Bruce Lee provide an alternative perspective for critically examining the revamped exhibition. Although seemingly liberated from the East/West cliché and challenging notions of stable identity, this approach philosophises Lee and prioritises his transnational aphorisms, risking decontextualisation and depoliticisation of Lee’s cultural resistance.

Bruce Lee: Kung Fu · art · life (2013–2020)

According to Christina Chu, director of the HKMoA, Hong Kong’s museums strive to navigate the tension between a Hong Kong rooted in Chinese culture and the acknowledgement that the city’s international standing owes much to its colonial past. The result of these efforts is an approach intended to promote a sense of ‘harmonious duality’ (Hwang 2002, 51), which was exemplified in the 2013 exhibition Bruce Lee: Kung Fu · Art · Life. This exhibition represented Lee as an exemplar of a harmonious blend of traditional Chinese virtues and modern Westernised culture. Chu Tat-shing, who created a sculpture of Lee for the exhibition, affirmed that ‘not only Chinese people [but] Western people also love him!’ (Visit HK Museums 2013). Moreover, this harmonious duality was presented as a unique feature of Hong Kong identity in the HKHM’s curation of the exhibition. Silver Cheung, the exhibition’s art director, noted that his team incorporated various representations of Hong Kong into the show, such as recreating a domestic scene from the 1960s–1970s with authentic settings and props. The aim of this approach, Cheung explained, was to ensure that the exhibit had a distinct ‘made-in-Hong Kong’ identity. Encountering Lee in this context, the visitors were expected to perceive him as truly representative of Hong Kong (Visit HK Museums 2013). However, by failing to explicitly address the historical context of Hong Kong during Lee’s life and the production context of his films, the exhibition contributed to a culture of disappearance and the performance of historical amnesia.

This exhibition consisted of four sections (Figure 1).² The entrance, entitled ‘Be Water’, focused on Lee’s philosophy of combat. The next section, ‘A Man’, presented a biographical account of his life. The ‘Actor’ section focused on his film career. The final section, ‘Kung Fu Master’, showcased objects and new media related to his martial arts practices and philosophy. The following discussion describes each of these sections in turn.

Figure 1. Floor plan of Bruce Lee: Kung Fu · art · life (2013–2020).

‘A man’: harmonious duality and decontextualised storytelling

According to Kenneth Hao, Lee’s memorabilia collector for the exhibition, Lee ‘helped redefine the Asian male’ (Visit HK Museums 2013). We found that in this exhibition section ‘A Man’, HKHM portrayed the life of Bruce Lee, this iconic ‘Hongkonger’, as a seemingly ‘global’ story through a focus on his geographic mobility and linguistic versatility. The ‘A Man’ section consisted of three spaces highlighting distinct aspects of Lee’s background and lifestyle. The first displayed a chronology of his life through narratives and pictures, including a 15-minute documentary that showcased Lee’s traditional virtues, such as filial piety, kindness, and loyalty, through interviews with relatives, acquaintances, and fellow filmmakers. The second space juxtaposed Lee’s Chinese and American backgrounds with historical documents and film excerpts, featuring his US birth certificate and his father’s application for a Return Certificate³ for an American citizen and showcasing his modern, Western lifestyle with clips of him performing the cha-cha.

Lee’s multi-ethnic family served to demonstrate his cosmopolitanism. Relevant materials included excerpts from two American magazines published in the 1960s. One, an interview article entitled ‘Bruce Lee: Mixed Marriage Brought Us a Miracle of Love’, described the romance between Lee and his wife Linda. The exhibition label below this magazine excerpt read ‘Bruce Lee mentioned that Brandon [his son with Linda] was being brought up in the Oriental and Occidental cultures and would be taught both, something that testifies to Bruce’s open-mindedness’. The other article, entitled ‘Bruce Lee: Love Knows no Geography’, also told of Lee’s cross-racial love story and his multi-ethnic family lineage, describing his mother as ‘a Eurasian beauty’ and his wife Linda as Swedish – English and mentioning his son Brandon’s ‘Oriental and Occidental’ characteristics.

The third area documented Lee’s geographic mobility and education in Hong Kong and the US, displaying registration records, school events, and examination results. The account of his English-language education mentioned that all of the notes that he took in secondary school and at university were in English. This section also highlighted the ‘harmonious duality’ in Lee’s life, including his virtues, education, lifestyle, and multi-ethnic family lineage and marriage. However, it manifested historical amnesia in its neglect of the complex and charged histories associated with modern China, Hong Kong’s colonial background, and global power dynamics from the 1900s through the 1960s.

The exhibition as a whole failed to contextualise the context of Lee’s ‘duality’. In the first half of the twentieth century, China faced considerable economic and political challenges, including poverty, political instability, and foreign intervention. Many Chinese sought to emigrate in search of a better life. These circumstances informed the decision by Lee’s father to take his family to San Francisco, where Lee was born and first appeared onscreen, in Esther Eng’s film Golden Gate Girl (1941).

Similarly, the exhibition failed to contextualise Lee’s English education in Hong Kong, which was a result of colonial governance. English at that time was the primary medium of instruction and symbolised social status and upward mobility. Elite schools established during the colonial period, such as La Salle College and St. Francis Xavier’s College, where Lee studied, provided a Western-style education emphasising English proficiency and were considered superior to the Chinese-language schools. Thus, the exhibition overlooked the colonial legacy and Lee’s uncommon middle-class background in 1950s Hong Kong.

‘Actor’: harmonious duality and historical amnesia

The ‘Actor’ section elaborated on the theme of ‘harmonious duality’ by emphasising Lee’s achievements in Hong Kong and Hollywood. It highlighted his cosmopolitan subjectivity in navigating the world through his acting career, which contributed to the international recognition of Hong Kong cinema.

The first area in this section showcased images representing Lee’s acting career in Hong Kong and the US against the backdrop of a world map. The focus was on Lee’s geographical mobility and global film production journey, the global impact of his work, and his ability to transcend cultural boundaries, all of which solidified his status as an international cinema icon. The second area featured artefacts such as the iconic yellow tracksuit from Game of Death, film posters, props, synopses, stills, and Lee’s notes and conceptual drawings representing his five best-known films, The Big Boss, Fist of Fury, Way of the Dragon, Enter the Dragon, and Game of Death.

In the first area, an old cathode-ray tube television played a 15-minute segment of a documentary, entitled Lee Siu Loong⁴: Movies (2013) (hereafter Movies), highlighting Lee’s significant contributions to Hong Kong cinema, which were influenced by his experiences in Hollywood. Movies begins with a powerful scene from Fist of Fury (1972) in which Lee’s character kicks a billboard outside Huangpu Park that reads ‘No dogs or Chinese allowed’. This scene presents Lee as an ethno-nationalist hero fighting against racist colonialism and is thus consistent with displays in history museums in other major Chinese cities that depict ‘victimhood nationalism’ (Lim 2010). However, Movies takes a different turn, with a Hong Kong filmmaker commenting that Lee’s kick shattered the traditional framework of Hong Kong cinema, ultimately leading to international recognition for both the industry and Lee. Movies also emphasises Chinese traditional culture, with the director John Woo observing that Lee pushed the boundaries of ‘Hong Kong cinema and Chinese spirituality to an extreme’.

Consequently, while the video initially depicts Lee’s film persona as that of a Chinese ethno-nationalist combating racism during colonial times, the interview shifts focus to the fusion of the traditional Chinese spirit with a modern Hong Kong movie industry facilitated by Lee’s global stardom and his ability to place global practices in a local context. This representation of Lee is problematic, because the clichéd account of East/West differences and fusion displaces Hong Kong’s unique culture. Further, the optimistic notion of a dynamic, seemingly equal exchange between the local and the global neglects the real power dynamics in the movie industry and the historical context of White supremacy that shaped global cultural production in the 1970s.

According to Kato (2007), the shooting of Enter the Dragon (1973) revealed explicit racist attitudes among the cast and crew. There were reports of verbal insults and demeaning treatment by the American producers and actor Bob Wall, who seemed to regard themselves as colonial masters and the Hong Kong crew as ‘working animals’ or ‘coolies’, resulting in discontent and resistance among the local workers (114). Interviews with these workers present Lee as a real-life hero who, for example, called for the removal of an American writer who perpetuated Asian stereotypes in the script. Moreover, despite careful rehearsals, Wall seriously injured Lee’s hand in the final take of a scene, an incident that the workers viewed as ‘treachery’. This led to multiple retakes of a scene in which Lee’s character delivers a powerful kick to the chest of the character played by Wall. These behind-the-scenes accounts expose the complexities of this sort of cultural production, challenge the notion of Lee’s career as an exemplar of harmonious global exchange, and document the conditions faced by marginalised groups in the global film industry, as well as Lee’s resistance to these conditions.

Bruce Lee: Kung Fu · Art · Life resembled exhibitions in national museums in Singapore and Qatar (Levitt 2015) in strategically highlighting and omitting certain elements of cosmopolitanism in its construction of a narrative of ‘harmonious duality’. Abbas’ concept of a culture of disappearance is particularly relevant in assessing an exhibition that emphasised Lee’s hybridity and cosmopolitanism while overlooking the historical and socio-political factors that shaped his upbringing and work, such as the poverty and warfare that plagued twentieth-century China, Lee’s middle-class background in colonial Hong Kong, and the impact of racially biased US-led cultural production in the 1970s. Such omissions represent a form of misrecognition, contributing to the representation of Lee as a symbol of Hong Kong’s cultural fusion without acknowledging power dynamics and historical struggles. The exhibition’s reliance on clichés such as a simplistic East/West divide thus perpetuated a culture of disappearance by providing a superficial narrative of cultural blending rather than a nuanced view of Hong Kong’s colonial history.

A man beyond the ordinary: Bruce Lee (2021–)

Opened in 2021, the revamped exhibition A Man Beyond the Ordinary: Bruce Lee consisted of five sections (Figure 2). The ‘Introduction’ section greeted visitors with a binary theme of ‘Ordinary – Extraordinary’ and the water motif, shifting the focus from combat to the meaning of life. The second section, divided into two parts entitled ‘Acting Career’ and ‘Beyond Being an Actor’, delved into Lee’s filmography and contributions to the world of film. The third section, divided into ‘Solid Martial Arts Skills’ and ‘Martial Artist’, narrated Lee’s martial arts journey, maintaining an approach similar to that of the previous exhibition. The fourth section, ‘Understanding Life through Martial Arts’, served as an archive of Lee’s life. The final section was an immersive installation entitled ‘Self – Martial Arts – Emptiness’. This revamped exhibition strategically brought Lee’s movie career to the forefront while shifting his biography towards the end. The reversed spatial layout and inverted narrative structure thus emphasised his cinematic achievements rather than his personal background.

Figure 2. Floor plan of A man beyond the ordinary: Bruce Lee (2021–).

The earlier exhibition immersed visitors in physical experiences by recreating a 1960s–1970s Hong Kong household and showcasing the iconic fight scene from Enter the Dragon (1973). These displays engaged visitors with realistic presentations of the socio-cultural environment and a film set. The revamped exhibition, by contrast, was devoid of specific historical or contextual imagery, instead offering virtual immersion through various interactive installations. Its circular yin/yang layout emphasised Lee’s abstract reasoning and philosophising rather than offering a realistic portrayal of him. As the third section largely retained the content from the earlier exhibition, our analysis focused on the second and fourth sections.

Career trajectories: omitting identity issues while emphasising the universal ‘walk on’ motto

An opaque screen marked the beginning of the ‘Acting Career’ section. A double-sided optical fibre projection showed visitors moving images of Lee and Lee’s own aphorisms such as ‘The meaning of life lies in living’ and ‘You must accept the fact that there is no help but self-help’. One side displayed only Lee’s traditional Chinese-style baby jacket, indicating its significance. However, the accompanying caption was brief: ‘Let’s revisit the birth of a legend with Bruce Lee’s baby jacket’. Typically, exhibition labels enhance viewers’ understanding and appreciation by providing context, highlighting key details, and offering insights into the significance of the exhibited items or themes. However, this one offered no information regarding the jacket’s significance, although its brevity may spark curiosity.

The other side of the screen featured oversized film reels adorned with film stills, posters, and newspaper clippings arranged chronologically (showing Lee as a child actor, in Hollywood, and in Hong Kong kung fu films) and geographically (Hong Kong, the US, Hong Kong). The previous exhibition highlighted Lee’s accidental appearance in the movie Golden Gate Girl (1941), attributing it to his father’s deliberate desire to secure US citizenship for his son. During a brief tour by Lee’s family, the director Esther Eng ‘borrowed’ the three-month-old for this film debut, although an archival image of Lee in Golden Gate Girl was displayed in the revamped exhibition without elaboration.

Rather than contextualising Lee’s life in the film industry, the ‘Acting Career’ section of the exhibition primarily showcased film clips using new media devices (e.g. the ‘Pepper’s ghost’ illusion). Interactive icons allowed visitors to access explanatory texts, plot details, and the clips. Additionally, visitors could play a combat game that involved choosing film clips from Lee’s major works and describing the characters therein. However, these new media presentations did not touch on the evolution of Lee’s filmic identity or his career transformation. These were only partially addressed in the section ‘Beyond Being an Actor’, which highlighted his contributions to scriptwriting, cinematography, and directing.

The section dedicated to Lee’s life story, ‘Understanding Life through Martial Arts’, took the form of a simple archive without an elaborate narrative. On display were such items as photographs of Lee as a student, hand-written notes for university exams, transcripts, kung fu institute certificates, and photos of Lee with friends. Compared with the original exhibition, this version downplayed the significance of Lee’s biography and his multicultural background. For instance, although a page from an American magazine discussing Lee’s mixed marriage and his blending of Western and Eastern cultures in raising his son was on display, the accompanying caption simply stated ‘Bruce Lee speaks of a guiding philosophy of life that he values highly: “Walk On!”’, without contextualising its content.

However, this famous motto had an important story behind it. In 1969, Lee severely injured his back during training following an inadequate warm-up. Told that he might never again engage in martial arts or return to full mobility, he researched his injury, devising a recovery path of his own. Amidst many challenges, he wrote ‘Walk On!’ on a business card as a daily reminder to persevere in his recovery whatever the expectations of his doctors (Bruce Lee Family Company n.d.).

The revamped exhibition concluded with a focus on the ‘walk on’ motto. Towards the end of the fourth section, visitors encountered an image of Lee’s broken glasses, which he kept as a symbol of self-encouragement during a time of financial difficulties and professional setbacks in the US. This visual was accompanied by a picture of the motto in Lee’s handwriting, further emphasising his resilience in the face of adversity.

Lee’s daughter Shannon Lee remarked of the revamped exhibition that its portrayal of Lee was ‘an experience … to inspire people all around the world’ and ‘bring us together as one family’ (HKHM 2022). The revamped exhibition departed from the previous grand narrative of ‘harmonious duality’ as a distinct Hong Kong identity and instead presented Lee as both ordinary and extraordinary, seemingly in response to the call for a post-national museology. The focus was on his personal struggles and achievements as he rose to global stardom and became a martial arts master. The exhibition incorporated more film clips than the previous one, emphasising Lee’s various roles and accomplishments in the film industry. Notably, it was framed by displays featuring Lee’s aphorisms on the meaning of life (in the second and fourth sections). Scholars recognise the universality of these aphorisms in positioning Lee as a figure who transcends national boundaries. The inclusion of the ‘walk on’ motto in the revamped exhibition was consistent with the discourse of the global ‘Bruce Lee industry’ (Preston 2007) in portraying Lee as a postnationalist and commodified hero figure whose values transcended specific cultural or national contexts and making this figure accessible to visitors from diverse cultural backgrounds. However, this perspective depoliticised Lee as a cultural hero for marginalised communities and reduced him to an apolitical cultural icon.

‘Self – martial arts – emptiness’: techniques of disappearance and deconstructing the concept of self

The centrepiece of the exhibition, the ‘Self – Martial Arts – Emptiness’ installation, showcased Lee’s life through martial arts, offering visitors an immersive experience that explored his concept of self-actualisation. This installation took the place of the holographic animated projection by the animator Shannon Ma in the previous exhibition. Whereas Ma’s work drew on action scenes from Lee’s films to ‘resurrect’ him (Visit HK Museums 2013), the new installation used 3D modelling to depict images and emphasised the conceptual expression of Lee’s philosophy (HKHM 2021). We argue that, in this deployment of techniques of disappearance, the setup, lighting, sensory elements, mirror reflections, symmetry, and visual treatment in the video installation worked together to create intricate and complex patterns, sensory overload, and spatial distortion. Consequently, the images became more abstract, ultimately challenging stable identities and subjectivities and prompting viewers to question their underlying assumptions and perceptions.

The installation was housed in a black box. Its circular design featured a curved screen at the front. The setup at the back recreated the film set for the fight scene in Enter the Dragon (1973), with numerous rectangular mirrors positioned to reflect and multiply both the images displayed on the screen and the presence of the audience. Visitors were immediately immersed in a profusion of images created by their reflections, which multiplied their presence and set the stage for the interactive experience that awaited them. A video entitled ‘Self – Martial Arts – Emptiness’ (我 武 無), consisting of five sections, was played on the front curved screen.

The first section, ‘Searching’, introduced viewers to Lee’s films through a visually captivating kaleidoscopic style with numerous images. The next section, ‘Self’, presented a close-up shot of Lee shattering a mirror with a powerful kick, resulting in the generation of multiple images of himself and challenging the notion that his identity was singular and stable. The word ‘Confrontation’ then came into view in a scene in which Lee engaged in combat with his own reflection, suggesting a distortion of the images and the self. This abstract space, reminiscent of The Matrix (1999), further reminded visitors of the complexities of identity and spatial distortion. In the ‘Martial Arts’ section, a blurred portrait of Lee appeared with the Chinese character meaning ‘empty’ (無) superimposed on his face. Through visual repetition and symmetry, Lee’s arms metamorphosed into multiple flapping wings and, eventually, abstract moving images. The image was suggestive of Abbas’ warning that through an inundation of signs and images, the impact of electronic technology caused the perception and experience of space to become abstract and elusive, resulting in ‘the contemporary mode of disappearance’ (Abbas 1997, 9). Likewise, the shift from Lee’s tangible physical image to an abstract visual pattern suggested the fluidity and malleability of identity. In the final section, ‘Emptiness’, a female narrator’s voice was accompanied by electronic sounds and stringed instruments. A more distinct image of Lee’s portrait then appeared while his voiceover asserted that ‘“Self” was an abstract word with no other meaning’.

Overall, the use of techniques of disappearance in the immersive installation engaged visitors on a sensory level, blurring the boundaries between the physical space of the exhibition and the virtual realm of Lee’s legacy. The experience seemed designed to encourage visitors to question not only Lee’s identity but also their own identities. However, this exploration of the self in the revamped exhibition failed to address the complexities of Lee’s filmic and extrafilmic personas and identity or his legacy. While Abbas (1997) argues that self-presentation in fixed representations can lead to postcolonial disappearance, we contend that in the revamped exhibition, the presentation of empty signifiers in an abstract physical – virtual world devoid of historical and current context also contributed to a culture of disappearance. Thus, the depoliticisation of Lee’s pursuit of the self by using new media and eliminating context ultimately displaced his original significance as a symbol of resistance.

Conclusions

The two successive Bruce Lee exhibitions at the HKHM provide a useful case study for examining how museum curators have adapted Lee’s multifaceted legacy and reshaped narratives about him in response to evolving cultural and political contexts. The first exhibition, Bruce Lee: Kung Fu · Art · Life (2013–2020), depicted a harmonious fusion of traditional Chinese values and modern Westernised culture emblematic of a unique Hong Kong identity. Such approaches, common among the city’s museums (Hwang 2002), involve the decontextualisation and oversimplification of deeper socio-political realities and reinforce the conception of Hong Kong as a culture of disappearance. In contrast, the revamped exhibition, A Man Beyond the Ordinary: Bruce Lee (2021–), employs postnational museology to portray Lee. Approaches include highlighting Lee’s global cinematic achievements, using minimalist layouts to emphasise his philosophy, and turning a phrase of his into a universal motto. These methods align with Macdonald’s (2003, 7) concept of postnational museology, which expresses the fluidity of cultural boundaries and identities. The HKHM curators further challenge visitors’ assumptions about the stability of selfhood and cultural identity through techniques of disappearance. However, this downplaying of cultural identity depoliticised Lee’s advocacy for justice and displaced his original significance as a symbol of resistance within a specific colonial history and cultural dominance.

We contend that the shift in focus in the updated exhibition reflects the challenges involved in public museum curation in Hong Kong as curators face political and cultural pressures along with the imperative to keep pace with developments in the field of museology. The revamped exhibition debuted during a turbulent period in Hong Kong’s socio-cultural and political landscape marked by setbacks in political democratisation, a stagnant economy, a loss of optimism about the future, an identity crisis, and a surge in emigration. By emphasising the ‘walk on’ motto while downplaying Lee’s ethnic – nationalist image, the updated exhibition might aim to foster resilience through a politically neutral interpretation of Lee’s legacy. Furthermore, ongoing tensions between China and the US have rendered efforts to maintain the ‘harmonious duality’ of East and West fusion problematic. The postnationalist stance of the revamped exhibition catered to visitors from Hong Kong, mainland China, and abroad, in part by avoiding ideological disputes and complex geopolitical tensions.

The use in the revamped exhibition of techniques of disappearance to challenge traditional representations made it more progressive than the earlier exhibition. However, as Abbas (1997, 14) suggests, ‘the wiping out of identity may not be an entirely negative thing, if it can be taken far enough’ (emphasis in original). In the case of the revamped exhibition, the deliberate omission of physical historical imagery encouraged viewers to disconnect Lee from his lived context, including (neo-)colonial oppression and postcolonial consciousness, as well as his original significance as a symbol of commitment to justice, combat, and resistance. This concealment and displacement of Lee from the local, national, and global dimensions of his persona did nothing to encourage visitors to engage in critical contemplation of the concept of the self in relation to nationalism and nation-building. The revamped exhibition thus served as a cautionary example of post-national museology, particularly in its effort to transcend national or ethnic narratives.

Furthermore, in embracing a spectacular, personal (but apolitical), and philosophised perspective on the concept of the ‘illusion of self’ and the motto ‘walk on’, this exhibition ostensibly preserved heritage and culture but in fact concealed the true complexities of Lee’s cultural significance and legacy in relation to global oppression and injustice. Consequently, in striving to transcend ‘East-meets-West’ clichés, the revamped exhibition reinforced a culture of disappearance by avoiding not only political resistance but also political imagination. Consequently, it reinforced the existing authoritarian regime and discouraged meaningful resistance and transformative action.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: The project was fully supported by a grant from the Research Grants Council of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, China (Project No.11602119).

Notes on contributors

Kimburley Wing Yee Choi

Kimburley Wing Yee Choi is Associate Professor of Department of Cultural Studies, Lingnan University. Choi’s research interests lie at the creative intersection of cultural studies, sociology, and media studies, focusing on media representations, power, and everyday life practices. Choi is the author of articles in Journal of Consumer Culture, Urban Studies, Qualitative Research, Cultural Studies Review, Ethnography, Gender, Place & Culture, Journal of Gender Studies, Social Semiotics, etc. In 2019, Choi’s paper titled “Home and the materialization of divergent subjectivities of older women in Hong Kong” won the Outstanding Paper Award (2018/19) from the Academy of Hong Kong Studies. She is currently involved in several research projects, including Hong Kong older women life history in the form of re-enactment through web-based interactive re-storytelling, Hong Kong museums and nation-building, and transnational woman subjectivities.

Hong Zeng

Hong Zeng is a cultural studies scholar whose research centres on the dynamics of gender and spatial politics within visual cultural production. Her work critically examines how ideologies operate and the various forms of resistance they generate in creative industries. She is currently Assistant Professor of the Academy of Film, Hong Kong Baptist University. She has published articles in European Journal of Cultural Studies, Visual Communication, Feminist Media Studies, Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies, etc. She was the 2020 Yale-China Arts Fellow and was a visiting scholar at the School of the Arts, Columbia University in 2015. She is currently working on her monograph Women Artists Reshaping Spatial Politics in Hong Kong. She is also a curator, and her curatorial projects bring political, societal, and ecological exigency to the fore via exploring the expressive mechanism of multiple art media.

Notes

1. Macao, a former Portuguese colony, became a Special Administrative Region of the People’s Republic of China on 20 December, 1999, adopting the ‘one country, two systems’ principle with a status similar to that of Hong Kong.

2. No photography is allowed in the exhibitions, so we cannot provide photos for illustration purposes.

3. A ‘Return Certificate’ for an American citizen in 1940s was a document issued by the US government allowing a citizen to leave the country temporarily for a visit abroad.

4. Lee Siu Loong is Bruce Lee’s Chinese name.