Kung The Fool

Kung Fu starring David Carradine as Kwai Cheng Cain, a shaolin disciple trudging across deserts in the West, taunted by cowboys and hoodlums and finally for him to deal them with some fatal blows were impressive and quite a novel concept. His Master would say to him: "Grasshopper (his nickname), as fast as you can, snatch the pebbles from my hand".

How many of you know that this story line was by Bruce Lee? He conceptualised it and wanted to act in it but because he is Chinese and they feared that the American public could not accept him gave the role to David Carradine. Carradine is quite an interesting character but can you imagine if it were Bruce who has taken the lead role. Ditto for The Green Hornet where Bruce was the sidekick chauffuer Kato who would in a few seconds fineshed off the baddies. Asian actors are usually cast as baddies or the butt of jokes or some sidekicks.

That is why it took Obama sometime to surface and this can only happen in America. Maybe they have a few hundreds of years of history as a nation. General Colin Powell was already a big shot and President George Bush himself started breaking down racial barriers as he has two African-Americans as secretaries of state with the present one being a woman too. He also appointed Hispanics.

But human beings still see things with tinted glasses with biased and prejudice. Maybe it is natural so we have to consciously unlearned it. The success of Kung Fu the series was relative. Had Bruce lee starred in it would the audience have really turned a blind eye, denounced it? Maybe the producers and some would. May be it is all in the timing depending when all these are happening.

Was Kung The Fool? The time for change has come?

The world is crazy when the best golfer in the world is black, and a very famous rapper is white (Eminem). Now we have F1 champion Louis Hamilton who is also black and his girlfriend Nicole Scherzinger of Pussy Cat Dolls (PCD) must be singing: "Don't cha wish your girlfriend was hot like me?" Don't cha?

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