Shaolin In popular culture

Shaolin Kungfu

Shaolin, in popular culture, has taken on a second life. Since the 1970s, it has been featured in many films, TV shows, video games, cartoons, and other media. While much of this is a commercialized aspect of Shaolin, it is also widely credited as keeping the 1500 year old temple in the consciousness of the world, and from vanishing into obscurity like many other ancient traditions. The Abbot of Shaolin, Shi Yong Xin, has decided to embrace modern day pop culture and has used it to the advantage of the temple to keep the temple prominent on the world stage. Shaolin monks have been featured on Fight Science, a National Geographic television series, performing feats of strength, endurance, and martial arts.

The 1970s television series Kung Fu starred David Carradine as Kwai Chang Caine,  a Shaolin monk on the run in the Wild West whose Zen (Ch’an) training is tested along his journey. Carradine’s part was originally to be played by Bruce Lee. Ironically, Lee was pulled at the last minute before airing for looking “too Chinese” for an American public accustomed to white actors portraying ethnic minority characters for a mainly white audience. However, the character of Caine was supposed to be of mixed Chinese and European ancestry, a fact which may have also had an influence on this decision. In the 1990s, Carradine starred in the series Kung Fu: The Legend Continues, which followed the grandson and great-grandson of the original Caine in a large modern city.

In 1977, the cult classic Shaw Brothers film Shaolin Temple was released and in 1982 a film by the same name starring Jet Li is credited as a major reason for the revival of the Shaolin Temple in China after the Cultural Revolution.  The film’s story tells the legend of the Shaolin Temple. This film is followed by countless other films, including another Shaw Brothers film entitled The 36th Chamber of Shaolin, which depicts the training of the legendary Shaolin monk San Te.

In the 1990s, American hip-hop group The Wu Tang Clan arose, often making frequent references to Shaolin, sometimes as a name for their home, Staten Island, New York. The references arise from the group growing up in Staten Island in the late 1970s, and being influenced by movie theaters playing and advertising Kung Fu movies based on the Shaolin fighting style. Video games and cartoons begin to also feature Shaolin, such as the cartoon Xiaolin Showdown. Liu Kang, the main character in the Mortal Kombat series, is a Shaolin monk, and Kung Lao from the same series, is also a Shaolin monk who seeks to avenge the temple’s destruction, (led by Baraka in Mortal Kombat‘s story), they were so popular, they were turned into their own video game, Mortal Kombat Shaolin Monks. Krillin, a character in the Dragon Ball/Dragon Ball Z universe, is also a Shaolin monk, though he abandons the Shaolin fighting style in favor of Muten-Rôshi’s Turtle technique.

In 2000′s, Shaolin gets pop-culture recognition by appearing on The Simpsons (TV series), where they visit the Shaolin Temple in the episode Goo Goo Gai Pan, which first aired in 2006. That same year, the Abbot of Shaolin invites the K-Star martial arts reality TV show to film a TV series of foreigners competing to survive Shaolin style training.

Two prominent publications about Shaolin were published in 2007, including the first ever photo documentary on the temple entitled Shaolin: Temple of Zen, published by the non-profit Aperture Foundation, featuring the photos of National Geographic photographer Justin Guariglia. The Shaolin Abbot, Shi Yong Xin, has written the foreword attesting the authenticity of the project. These became the first photographs seen of monks practicing classical kung fu inside the temple. American author Matthew Polly, also has written a book recounting his story of his two years living, studying, and performing with the Shaolin monks in China in the early 1990s. A third, more academic book, is “The Shaolin Monastery; History, Religion, and the Chinese Martial Arts,” published by the Israeli Shaolin scholar Meier Shahar in 2008 about the history of the Shaolin Temple.

While some of these are clear commercial exploitation of the Shaolin Temple and its legends, they have helped make Shaolin a household name around the world, and kept the temple alive in the minds of many young generations. To date, no other temple in the world has achieved such wide spread recognition.

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