Television series, for the most part, can be categorized by genre. You have your action-adventure series, from The Adventures of Superman in the 1950s up to Percy Jackson and the Olympians, which is topping streaming charts with its recently released second season. You have your Westerns, like Bonanza or Netflix's The Abandons, or even those series centered around the martial arts like Cobra Kai. Then you have a series like 1972's Kung Fu, an ambitious series that combined all three of those genres together, the brainchild of creators Ed Spielman and Howard Friedlander. ...Or the iconic Bruce Lee. See, Kung Fu's lineage has been a source of debate for decades now, and, depending on who you believe, Spielman came up with the premise himself, or he stole it from Lee. One thing that isn't debatable is how offensive the series is in retrospect.
'Kung Fu's Origins are Questionable
Kung Fu follows the adventures of Kwai Chang Caine (David Carradine), an orphan who grows up in a Shaolin monastery to become a Shaolin priest and a martial arts expert. But after being wrongfully accused of killing the emperor's nephew, he flees to the American Old West in the hope of finding his half-brother. Along the way, Caine rights wrongs, using nothing but his skills in martial arts to fight for justice and protect the innocent, all while espousing Taoist aphorisms. According to Lee's wife Linda, the concept comes from Lee, saying:
"Bruce himself had been working on the idea of a Shaolin priest, a master of kung fu, who would roam America and find himself involved in various exploits. The studio contacted him, and he was soon deeply involved. He gave them numerous ideas, many of which were eventually incorporated into the resulting TV success, Kung Fu, starring actor David Carradine."
Spielman, on the other hand, had long harbored a passion for Asian culture ever since watching Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samurai in 1956, and the young Jewish writer was inspired to become a student of Japanese karate and Chinese kung fu. He decided to write a treatment for a movie about Miyamoto Musashi, a famed samurai who befriends a Shaolin monk who teaches him kung fu. After sharing his story with his writing partner Friedlander, the pair ditched the samurai angle and focused on the monk, with Friedlander suggesting the Shaolin monk should come to the West. The movie, which saw the monk "right wrongs with pacifist Easter philosophy and, if that failed, kicking serious cowboy butt," eventually became the basis for a TV movie called Kung Fu, which then begat the series.
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That two different people would come up with such a similar, specific idea would certainly seem to discount coincidence. The facts, however, place Spielman's account as being accurate. In his book, the previously cited Bruce Lee: A Life, author Matthew Polly explains how the timeline discounts Lee's account. The casting process for Kung Fu was underway when Lee heard about it after returning from Thailand, where he filmed The Big Boss. He actually even auditioned for the role of Caine, but after losing the role to Carradine, Lee was approached with an exclusive development deal to create his own TV show. What he proposed was a project called Ah Sahm, later retitled The Warrior, which was strikingly similar to, you guessed it, Kung Fu. Complicating matters, however, is the fact that Lee's proposal wasn't dated, so it's unknown if he wrote it before or after he read the Kung Fu screenplay, hence the debate.
'Kung Fu' Runs Afoul of Asian Actors, but a Reboot Years Later Makes Things Right
Had Lee actually been cast as Caine, there would be no debate. But he lost out, with the belief that the intense Lee couldn't portray the quiet serenity of the character. Well, that's part of it, but the bigger problem, per Polly, is that his accent made understanding him difficult. Whether that's fair is up for debate, but with established Asian American actors like Mako and George Takei also passed up, it's hard to believe that there wasn't a degree of racism behind the decisions. Adding insult to injury was the casting of Carradine, who, in the TV movie, has his head shaved and eyelids taped back in unbashed yellowface, as Caine. At the time, in Hollywood, where opportunities for Asian actors were few and far between, many Asian actors that working in secondary roles on a successful show was better than no roles whatsoever (per Polly).
The series was highly successful, running for three seasons and spawning sequels, but the blatant yellowface portrayal, whitewashing of other minorities, perpetuation of stereotypes, and the overt gender inequality have not aged well -- it is still an offensive series that sought to hide behind bringing something unique to television. But beginning in 2019, two different projects not only righted those wrongs but gave Bruce Lee vindication. The first is Warrior, a series based on notebooks Lee left behind full of ideas for his rejected TV series featuring the character Ah Sahm. The series was created by Jonathan Tropper with support from Lee's daughter Shannon Lee as an executive producer, bringing the martial arts legend's story into the modern day. The second is a full-on re-imagining of Kung Fu, also called Kung Fu, a series that premiered on The CW in 2021 with a largely Asian American cast, and one that sets right the original show's most glaring offense by centering the story around Olivia Liang's Nicky Shen, an Asian American woman playing as the Asian American lead.
Kung Fu TV-14 Drama Western Sci-Fi & Fantasy Action Release Date 1972 - 1975-00-00 Where to watch Close WHERE TO WATCH BUY
Genres Drama, Western, Sci-Fi & Fantasy, Action Powered by Expand Collapse